


Black Despondency

by Koushicore (Hopeishope)



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Yakuza, Angst, Blood and Violence, Bokuaka - Freeform, Despite all the angst all of them are idiots, Emotional Manipulation, Gun Violence, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, KuroKen - Freeform, M/M, Minor Character Death, Minor implied background relationships, Past Abuse, Past Sexual Abuse, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Prostitution, Slow Burn, Smoking, Sniper Kuroo, Yakuza, iwaoi - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-24
Updated: 2021-03-10
Packaged: 2021-03-15 04:21:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 3
Words: 30,323
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29678361
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hopeishope/pseuds/Koushicore
Summary: “Real influence is how someone can change the outcome of anything simply by existing in that space… What will you do? Who will you tell, if you tell anyone? Does it even matter? Because really, no matter what you do, my presence here has already deviated the outcome. That’s influence.”Kenma would never admit to being emotionally affected by anything, but some (Bokuto) would say he was a bit paranoid when it came to making sure everything was exactly the way it was supposed to be. A war between the three yakuza syndicates populating Tokyo definitely wasn’t the way things were supposed to be, and that being the least of Kenma’s problems was somehow even worse.
Relationships: Akaashi Keiji/Bokuto Koutarou, Iwaizumi Hajime/Oikawa Tooru, Kozume Kenma/Kuroo Tetsurou, Sawamura Daichi/Sugawara Koushi
Comments: 11
Kudos: 24





	1. Chapter One

**Part One: Kuroo**

* * *

Kuroo adjusted his view in the scope of his rifle, watching carefully as his target stood just out of sight behind a pillar on the corner of the illuminated balcony, gathered with some of his coworkers and most trusted men with a glass of champagne in his hand and not a care in the world. He took a careful breath, feeling his body rise and fall in such a way that the rifle wouldn’t move even a fraction of a centimeter from its target as the cold night air filled his lungs. He had one leg propped up beside it, one keeping him upright, and his back was bent over in an irritatingly uncomfortable yet familiar position. He took another breath.

“Hey Tetsurou, did you fall asleep up there? Or did you not plan on taking this guy out sometime before we all die of old age?” 

Kuroo wanted to huff out a laugh at the voice that came in through the wired headset taped around his ear and snaking down his back underneath his black getup, but he didn’t want to cause his aim to falter, so instead he just let one corner of his mouth turn up in a grin underneath his facemask. 

“Bite me, Hajime,” Kuroo mumbled back, watching his target shift his weight from one foot to the other from behind the pillar that was blocking him. If he just moved two feet to the left Kuroo would have a perfect shot, but no, he had to stand in literally the only place Kuroo couldn’t see him. “Did you want to take the shot instead? You’re more than welcome to.”

“Maybe if I did, we would have finished this job already,” Iwaizumi replied with a sarcastic drip to his tone and an exaggerated yawn. “I’m getting bored over here.”

“I didn’t know you were such a marksman,” Kuroo joked with another smile, resisting the urge to roll his eyes as the businessman in question slunk even further behind the pillar.

“I didn’t know you suddenly weren’t,” Iwaizumi bit back, followed by a short laugh. “What’s the hold up?”

“You’re distracting me,” Kuroo mumbled, which was a complete lie because in reality Iwaizumi could sit there poking and prodding at him all he liked and Kuroo would still be able to hit his target. The problem was the goddamn pillar in the way. Not even he could magically make a bullet change directions in midair, though that sounded appealing at the moment. 

“On a serious note,” Iwaizumi clarified, but Kuroo could still heart the uplift of his tone that came with a gentle smile. He could picture his friend shifting his weight on his feet and rolling his shoulders back waiting for his turn to participate instead of sitting around waiting on someone else, but of course he would act like he was just getting warmed up. 

“I have something in my way,” Kuroo told him honestly, tsking at the end of that statement. “Do you think if I fired a shot at one of his other men or at the walls around him he would run inside?”

“I think you’d have to be ready to take that second shot immediately once you take the first,” Iwaizumi said. Kuroo quirked the side of his mouth down in lieu of a nod because he wasn’t exactly wrong. “But if you fire near the door his instinct might be to back away from it. He’s on a balcony, he has nowhere else to go.”

“And who gets in trouble with Daichi when I take that first shot and he gets away, me or you?”

“Me? Why would I get in trouble?” Iwaizumi asked in a calm tone, already making his answer loud and clear. Of course Iwaizumi wouldn’t get in trouble with Daichi, he could literally say it was Kuroo’s idea and nobody would bat an eye because it wouldn’t have been the first time Kuroo had had some dangerously stupid and bizarre last minute idea. 

“You’re talking me into it,” Kuroo said with a mischievous smirk, focusing on the bit of the man’s shoulders sticking out from behind the pillar. He had a muffler on his gun, so theoretically if he took a shot at the door the businessman might not realize what it was that had hit it and might go towards the door instead. He also didn’t want to leave behind anything that could point to the conclusion of him being a bad sniper because that was bullshit and he was better than that. He shifted his gun just slightly, aiming it at the railing closest to him. “I’m gonna take the shot,” he decided, licking his lips as he took a breath. “Heads or tails?”

With the small pause that came before Iwaizumi’s answer, Kuroo could almost picture him rolling his eyes. “Heads.”

“Tails,” Kuroo replied quickly, taking the shot the second the words had left his mouth. The sound of something flying into the railing of the balcony turned all heads in his direction. The target turned around completely, staring at the spot as if he felt like he was just as insane as the rest of them for hearing such a sound, but he wouldn’t have to contemplate that for much longer. He had already made the mistake of exposing himself.

Kuroo realigned the gun and took his next shot, a bullet right between the eyes. The man fell with what Kuroo imagined was a heavy thud considering his size, and even from several buildings away with the wind blowing by him and the chatter in his headset, he could still hear the sounds of a few people screaming. 

“Got him,” Kuroo said proudly, finally pulling back from his rifle. He rolled his shoulder back immediately, hearing a loud crack running up his spine as he relieved himself from the tension. When he was done he focused on pulling his gun back from the ledge of the roof, handling it carefully so he couldn’t scratch it on anything.

“Show off,” Iwaizumi muttered, sounds of rustling and movement coming through surrounding his voice. “Go home and leave the rest of the job to us.”

“Oh, sure,” Kuroo agreed, nodding as he rolled his shoulders back to ease the stress of sitting hunched over like that for so long, “but are you sure you guys didn’t fall asleep waiting on lil old me? Should be concerned for your safety? Do you need me to babysit you?”

Iwaizumi barked a sarcastic laugh into his microphone. “Go home, you prick.”

“Don’t die,” Kuroo added, reaching behind himself to pull the rifle case to his side with the gun in his lap so he could dismantle it. The task was nothing but rudimentary at this point with how many times he had repeated the motion. “If you die I have to get a new roommate.” He began to pack each part of the rifle safely in its spot between the wedges of foam, hoping he wasn’t missing anything with how dark the roof was. 

“How considerate of you,” Iwaizumi joked. “I’ll see you later.” 

Kuroo merely nodded before pulling the wires away from his ears, wincing as the tape peeled off his skin with a tangled knot of black wires he was undoubtedly going to have to untangle later. He shoved the wires and microphone lazily in his pocket before clipping his rifle case shut and pushing himself to his feet with a slight ache in his legs; nothing he wasn’t used to.

Picking the case up with one hand, Kuroo began to make his way down the stairs of the large building. He took his time, rolling his neck a few more times and just listening to the sound of his feet echoing against the concrete steps. He jumped over the last three steps at the bottom of the last stairwell, jostling his case in the process but successfully avoiding the unconscious guard he had left there a few hours prior. That poor man was going to be smelling chemicals for days when he finally woke up. 

He walked back out onto the dimly lit streets with a breath of fresh air, even if it was muffled by the black facemask secured tightly over his nose and mouth. Being out of the conflict and having the ability to say he had completed another mission was a breath of fresh air in and of itself.

The outskirts of Kanagawa were much more appealing at night when the trash in the streets couldn’t be seen without any effort to find it and people didn’t walk so closely together, suffocated in their own lack of personal space. It was easier to breathe and much more comfortable to walk through. The only problem was he was still walking, and just because the streets were less populated didn’t mean there was nobody there. He would have much rather just taken public transportation, but it was so late at night half of the busses weren’t even running and it wasn’t like he knew the schedules. It wasn’t that he hated walking, he just hated being so exposed. Anyone could see him right now. Anyone could watch him from any shadowy corner and decide they wanted to test their luck with him. 

Kuroo wished he could take walks like everyone else without worrying about those things. He would have rather spent hours upon hours roaming the streets than go home anyway. It wasn’t that he didn’t like the Karasuno house, or that he didn’t like the people there. Far from it actually, they were his family. But being home felt stifling. Being home put him more on guard and on edge than being out in Tokyo did, even when he could die just for setting foot in the wrong building or losing track of time and stepping over the wrong border. It was better when it was just him and Iwaizumi there alone—Iwaizumi always made him feel like he could relax a little when he was home. But Iwaizumi and him were both adults and most of the time they were out on work late at night or something was keeping them up. Iwaizumi wasn’t always home, and Kuroo didn’t want to put all of the pressure on his friend to make him feel accepted in his own home, but that was certainly how it felt. 

“Hey, sir! Come sit for a second and play a round!” 

Kuroo looked up from the road in front of him to the men sitting around a table outside a bar gambling. It wasn’t that he hadn’t seen them, he just hoped _ they _ wouldn’t see  _ him _ . He stopped walking for a moment, looking the lot of them over, before turning to continue on his way. Why would he even bother betting on a rigged game he was bound to lose?

“Hey! We’re talking to you!” 

“Wait, stop, stop,” one of the man’s friends shushed quickly, slapping him on the shoulder and creating a huge fuss. “Don’t you know who that is?!” Kuroo stopped walking again, not moving his head an inch but inclining his eyes toward his right shoulder as he listened. “That’s The Black Sheep! Y’know, the Karasuno guy?!”

The other man barked out a laugh. “Black Sheep my ass. He’s hardly real Karasuno!”

“Shut up will you?! What if they have us killed?!”

Kuroo sighed and pushed himself forward, dumping the words of those meaningless shits to the back of his mind. Maybe walks weren’t so great after all. What point was there if he was still going to be recognized as a member of the same yakuza he had intended to avoid?

\---

Kuroo watched from the corner of the lavish room, decorated with fancy paintings and freshly painted walls, as everyone rushed around like a group of unorganized children in a playhouse. The room was a dark red color filled with spruce colored furniture. The carpet laying over the floor was a light tan and it hid a huge blood stain underneath it none of them had ever been able to remove. In fact, a lot of the floors in the house were ruined in some way or another, but they shined from constant cleaning to the point where it was hard to tell. They also moved all the furniture to cover the stains, so that helped, too.

Over by the dining table in the middle of the room, Terushima was trying to hit Shibayama for some reason. Yamamoto was recounting some wild story with an atrocious amount of details that weren’t actually in any way true to a group of his brothers who were just nodding their heads along to humor him. Lev was bothering Alisa for helping Yaku again, meanwhile Yaku was scolding Lev for not helping him instead like he was supposed to be. It was a sight true to behold: one big family that all fit together like a puzzle if you stuck around long enough to see it. 

He turned his head away from the room and looked back out the window. His back was pressed against the frame and his feet were propped up on the sill, hands in his lap with the remnants of a cigarette stuck between his fingers. He could no longer smell the smoke from it, which was fine because he hated the smell anyways. He’d rather not smoke, but he didn’t have anything else to do and perhaps the false pretense of relaxation it gave him was more than just a plus. 

The clouds completely blocked out the sky, but it wasn’t like there were many stars to see anyways. They lived too close to too many cities to ever be able to see them in their full glory, so a cloud filled sky ended up being just as interesting as a clear one.

From his seat on the window, which faced the front yard of the Karasuno house, he could see the front gates being pulled open by the two people the rest of the house was waiting on—all except him, of course. A nicely dressed man in a simple suit with a pretty boy dressed nicely by his side, walking and talking together as the gates swung shut behind them like they had just come back from a relaxing date. Daichi walked forward like he was made to have somebody right behind him, people bowing to him, and a kingdom as his feet. The man behind him was less-so put together, wearing nothing but a simple sweater and a scarf tucked around his neck, following at his side like a lost puppy. 

Daichi continued to talk to Suga the whole time he walked, a gentle smile on his lips as he led him down the front path. Kuroo was sure the ashy haired boy was listening intently, as anyone would, until Suga’s head lifted, clearly having spotted Kuroo’s unmistakable silhouette against the backdrop of the brightly lit dining room. He flashed a smile at the window before returning his attention to whatever Daichi was saying, following him up to the front doors of the house.

Kuroo didn’t smile back. It wasn’t that he didn’t like Suga; there was nothing wrong with the boy, but there was nothing special about him either. 

The doors opened with a loud creak and instantly everyone’s heads turned to watch Daichi walk in with Suga at his side. They all bowed to him, shouting various greetings with various amounts of comical emphasis added for no reason depending on how close they were to the boss. Kuroo merely dipped his head in respect and went back to looking out the window.

“Dinner is almost ready,” Yaku informed the group, followed by a yelp from Lev who he most likely hit in the shins again.

“Right on time, as always,” Daichi commented with a kind tone, followed by the sound of shuffling from him most likely removing his jacket. “You’re the best, Yaku.”

“Don’t flatter me, this is literally my job,” Yaku replied with a laugh. “Lev!” he then yelled. “Stop whining and help me.”

Kuroo let his eyes fall from the bland sky outside to the front yard as everyone returned to what they had been doing. It was beautifully up-kept, grass trimmed and flowers growing in neat bushes. Of course, it looked over the top artificial as well, but there was a certain intimidating beauty to that artificial upkeep.

He turned his head only a fraction of an inch at the sound of approaching steps. He kept his eyes focused on the window as he tensed up, but he relaxed again when he realized it was just Suga. Out of everyone, his footsteps were the lightest. Kuroo had missed the boy’s approach so many times when he first arrived at the house that Kuroo had trained himself to recognize the sound so Suga couldn’t sneak up on him. He didn’t bother turning to greet him, having no interest in talking to him in the first place.

The footsteps stopped just behind him, and of course Suga wasted no time starting a conversation. “Are you going to eat with us today?” he asked as if it was any of his business.

Kuroo sighed, still looking out the window as he waited for Iwaizumi to come back so he could go back to ignoring everyone else. “The family doesn’t always have to eat together, you know,” Kuroo decided to say, which didn’t really answer Suga’s question in the slightest. 

“But you’re here now, so why not?” Suga asked

“Just because I’m here doesn’t mean I’m not busy.”

He wished his cigarette was still lit right now. He wished he could walk away from Suga without coming off as more of an asshole than everyone already thought he was, and he wished Suga would just leave him alone instead of trying to make small talk. 

Suga walked slowly over to the wall at Kuroo’s feet, leaning his back against it and watching as the rest of the family either set the table or goofed off. He crossed his arms over his chest and tilted his head back so the back of it rested against the wall.

“Daichi has something to talk about with you after dinner,” he said, his voice unusually quieter than what Kuroo was used to. Kuroo let his eyes flicker to the rest of the house as Suga watched them before turning to look back out the window. He had to hand it to the man though, he did a good job of speaking with caution when he didn’t want anyone else to overhear him without seeming suspicious. 

“Why isn’t Daichi telling me this himself?” Kuroo asked, tipping his head to one side. “He has two working legs and knows how to talk.”

“You shouldn’t say things like that about him,” Suga cautioned, but again his voice was quiet.

“Why not?” Kuroo challenged, crossing his own arms over his chest.

“Because he’s your kumicho and, technically speaking, you should respect him,” Suga pointed out, but Kuroo couldn’t honestly be bothered to give a shit. 

“That’s funny, coming from his boyfriend,” Kuroo mumbled, but it appeared Suga heard him anyway. Kuroo didn’t really care if the boy heard him or not, and in his head he continued the thought with  _ you don’t have a right to lecture me on respect, you’ve only been here for a year. _ Kuroo didn’t peg Suga as the type of person to be able to read others well, but surprisingly it seemed as if Suga got the unspoken message.

“I’m not telling you that because of my relationship with him,” Suga stated without any weight real behind his words which was weird considering he was dating a yakuza boss, but his tone still carried an unmistakable confidence, as if he wasn’t even slightly ashamed of anything to do with who he was or how he got here. Suga turned his full attention to the people in front of him again, watching as Daichi spoke to some of them while they all waited for dinner to be finished. “You know why I’m saying it.”

“Do I now?” Kuroo asked blandly, and although he absolutely did, he was not about to give Suga the satisfaction of knowing that. The more he slandered Daichi, the more everyone was going to despise him, and it seemed Suga had already picked up on that. 

“You don’t eat dinner with us because they all give you dirty looks when they think you’re not looking.”

“They don’t-”

“I’m not blind or stupid,” Suga cut him off quickly, his voice somehow gentle and confident at the same time. Kuroo shut his mouth to let him continue. “It’s not hard to tell. You sound like you undermine him even if you have more respect for him than this whole group, but they don’t know that so they give you dirty looks and talk behind your back.” Suga turned so his shoulder was leaning against the wall this time, eyes meeting Kuroo’s. “Can you talk to Daichi?”

“Why?” Kuroo challenged immediately, narrowing his eyes at the boy. “About what?” he added.

“You’re the only one here who would ever dare tell him no,” Suga said with a small shrug, pushing himself up and walking over to Kuroo’s side, placing a hand on his shoulder and stopping right by his side, looking straight ahead. “Kuroo, what do you think I am to Daichi?”

“His boyfriend,” Kuroo answered immediately, not bothering to look over at him. Instead he kept his head straight forward, letting Suga’s hand rest on his shoulder. 

“And yet I’m still a brother of Karasuno, just like you; just like the rest of them,” Suga mumbled. “So do you think he’d listen to me if I talked to him about the politics of the yakuza?”

Kuroo pursed his lips, knowing the answer. “No.”

“You’re different. He actually listens to what you say occasionally,” Suga reminded him, patting him on the shoulder. “I just wanted to ask if you could talk to him, that’s all. If you don’t want to eat with everyone I can have Yaku save you a plate for later.”

“Don’t bother,” Kuroo decided, pushing himself up from the windowsill and feeling Suga’s hand fall away from his shoulder. He walked out of the dining room area without meeting anyone’s eyes or giving an explanation, making his way down the hallway until he came to the end of it, standing in front of the very last door in the lineup. He pushed it open easily, closing it behind him with the toe of his shoe and throwing himself down on his mattress. The shoddy thing didn’t even have a sheet on it and laid on the open floor like he had no intention of putting any effort into making it look like it belonged there, which he didn’t. 

He had snacks stashed throughout the room, so reasonably he could wait there all night until Iwaizumi came to occupy the other bed in the small room they shared despite living in a mansion and he wouldn’t have to leave and see the rest in the house until at least tomorrow afternoon. The longer he could avoid everyone, the better. Then again, Daichi wanted to talk to him didn’t he? 

Kuroo shoved his head into his pillow and groaned.

He must have dozed off at some point, because next thing he knew a horribly loud knock was pounding at his door. He lifted his head to look at it, waiting. Iwaizumi didn’t knock, and he certainly didn’t knock like  _ that _ . Sadly he knew who did.

“Hey Sheep, the boss wants you.”

Kuroo pushed himself up, pulling open the door with no emotion only to see Terushima standing proudly on the other side with a smirk on his face, ripped tank top hanging off his exposed shoulders with piercings decorating every inch of his face.

“Okay.”

“Do you know what it’s about?” Terushima asked as Kuroo walked past him to make his way to Daichi’s office. He could hear the man’s footsteps trailing behind him with a sudden headache forming behind his eyes.

“No idea,” Kuroo answered plainly, which was true because although Suga had told him Daichi wanted to talk he didn’t actually say a damn thing about why.

“Why not? I thought you were Suga’s new best friend?” Terushima continued pushing. Kuroo made a mental note to keep his distance from Suga for the next few days so they wouldn’t be associated. “Tell me, Sheep, do you spend more time with Daichi’s pets than the man himself because you feel like you finally fit in?”

Kuroo didn’t answer him as they got within earshot of Daichi’s office, not even stopping to give him a harsh look as he headed for the door. He barely let his knuckles come down on it before pushing it open and walking in, leaving a snickering Terushima behind him.

Daichi sat at his desk, paperwork scattered out in front of him. He looked professional, like a true kumicho. Of course, field work always did some favors to emphasize Daichi’s dedication to the syndicate, but Kuroo knew his confidence came with his leadership, not his field skills, and that always showed more when he handled reports and gave out orders from behind his desk. 

“You left before dinner,” Daichi pointed, looking up from his work to give Kuroo all of his attention.

Kuroo shrugged as he took the seat in front of his desk. “Wasn’t hungry. What do you need?”

Daichi gave up easily, shrugging as he reached to the side of his desk for a large manila folder, handing it over the desk. Kuroo reached across to take it, having to use both hands to avoid dropping it since it was so stuffed with loose papers. 

“I have a new mission for you,” Daichi told him, gesturing with his chin to the folder he had just handed him.

“Long-term?” he asked, flipping through the papers quickly for a once-over before turning his attention back to Daichi to hear his overview of it. He could read the files later.

“Yeah,” Daichi confirmed with a nod. “You’ll be going undercover.”

Kuroo felt his muscles tense, his blood freezing in his veins like the entire world had stopped moving around him as Daichi watched him, waiting for an answer. “I’m sorry, I think I might have misheard you,” Kuroo mumbled, his eyes dropping to his lap as he tried to work out exactly why Daichi would be sending him of all people on an undercover mission.

“I’m sure you did not,” Daichi said instead of repeating what Kuroo had definitely heard correctly. 

“Incase you’ve forgotten, I’m an assassin not an undercover rat,” Kuroo stated sternly, trying to hold himself back from glaring at the man. “My identity is the most secret out of anyone in Karasuno and you want to throw that away over an undercover mission you could send anyone on?” 

“Your secretive nature is exactly why you’re the best fit for this mission,” Daichi argued as if it was that simple, but Kuroo was less than satisfied with an answer as vague and shoddy as that one. 

“Anyone can be secretive enough to pull off an undercover mission, it’s easy enough to learn.”

“Being completely unknown to Aoba Johsai isn’t something you can learn, Kuroo.”

Aoba Johsai? That was one of the other three yakuza syndicates in the Tokyo area. Why would Kuroo have to be unknown to them? Compared to the other syndicates, Aoba Johsai had the most political influence, Karasuno right behind them. They had always been at odds with each other. Fukurodani stayed out of the Yakuza politics but Aoba Johsai was too involved with it for their forces not to meet every now and then. But why would Daichi even need Kuroo to be unknown to them?

Kuroo couldn’t even form a response as he looked Daichi up and down as if he would get any explanation from that. He shut his mouth and opened it again. “And why the  _ hell _ are you sending me to Aoba Johsai?”

“Kuroo-”

“Don’t look me in the eyes right now and tell me you want to start something with Aoba Johsai,” Kuroo snapped, staring the man down just hoping he would prove him wrong. “I’m imagining things, right? You’re not  _ actually _ thinking of doing that, are you?”

“Why shouldn’t we?” Daichi asked, leaning forward in his seat while Kuroo could only feel his entire soul deflating.

“Are you fucking kidding me…”

“It’s the perfect time to do it,” Daichi continued, folding his hands on the desk in front of him as if they were just working out a day to get lunch. Was talking about starting a conflict between two yakuza syndicates really that calming of a subject? 

“You just came to power less than a year ago!” Kuroo pointed out loudly. “I know you want to prove yourself to the lower levels of the syndicate, but creating a conflict is not the way to do that.”

“I just need you to go on this mission, Kuroo. I don’t need you to give me advice about my decisions.”

“Well damn, then maybe you should get an advisor who will tell you how stupid your decisions are!” Kuroo nearly yelled, standing up from his seat at the same time Daichi pushed himself up in a slow and relaxed manner, having probably seen Kuroo’s actions coming from a mile away.

“Okay, fine,” Daichi relented rather easily, but that could have meant nothing good for Kuroo. He walked around the desk until he was standing in front of it, leaning back and sitting on the part of his desk that faced Kuroo and folding his hands in front of himself. “What would  _ you _ advise we do about Aoba Johsai?”

“Absolutely nothing. Why do we need to make a move on Aoba Johsai? Have they done something bad?” Kuroo asked, narrowing his eyes at Daichi who stared back without backing down. “As far as I know, Aoba Johsai has stayed away from our borders and hasn’t interfered with our business in Tokyo except for a few run-ins which, in case you haven’t noticed, have gone both ways.”

“And what should we do about Akaashi?” he asked, tilting his head slightly to the side.

“What about Akaashi?” Kuroo asked, furrowing his brows at the man. “He’s the leader of a broken syndicate right now, struggling to keep the power of his own succession. He has little to no political influence except what he inherited and he’s still struggling to figure out how to lead anybody. Why would he be a danger to us?”

“You think it will stay that way forever?” Daichi asked, unmoving and completely comfortable with the way he was positioned, like he had thought this through a million times despite the fact that he couldn’t have, because if he really thought about the decisions he was making he wouldn’t be doing something this stupid. When Kuroo didn’t answer, Daichi continued. “What happens when Akaashi pulls Aoba Johsai together and gets his influence? What happens when he’s stable?”

“Nothing,” Kuroo answered simply. “He continues to run Aoba Johsai, you continue to run Karasuno. Simple.”

“And if Akaashi starts a fight with us once he’s powerful enough?”

“Why would he? Right now we have more power than him.”

“But what happens when he has more power than we do?” Daichi countered. Kuroo felt himself boiling up with frustration more and more by the second.

“Aoba Johsai had more power than Karasuno just a year ago and yet there were still no issues,” he said sternly. “You and Akaashi are the same age, still learning how to run syndicates and focusing heavily on business. Why the hell would he start something with us? Over politics? Even if he did have more influence than us, number wise and territory wise our syndicates are fairly even so he would be doing nothing but damning his syndicate.”

“Aoba Johsai was moving in on our borders before the late kumicho of Aoba Johsai passed,” Daichi pointed out, raising his eyebrows as if expecting Kuroo to try to deny that.

“Moving in on borders is not a declaration of war.”

“It could have become one, though.”

“And you think just because Akaashi’s predecessor  _ might _ have started something that  _ he _ definitely will?”

“He is a product of the system.”

“Then so are you!” Kuroo pointed out, knowing from Daichi’s lack of reaction that he was coming dangerously close to crossing a line, as if he somehow hadn’t already. 

“Aoba Johsai is weak, exposed, and vulnerable right now,” Daichi pointed out as if he wasn’t in the exact same situation with Karasuno. “It’s the perfect time to take them out of the picture before we end up paying the price for it.”

“We’re going to pay the price now if you start a fight over this,” Kuroo argued sternly, balling his hands into fists. “Daichi listen to me, you don’t want to be the one to start this. Karasuno and Aoba Johsai have existed peacefully side by side for years. Don’t be the one to ruin that.”

“Don’t tell me what I do and do not want, Kuroo,” Daichi said. Begrudgingly, Kuroo shut his mouth. “I don’t want our syndicate to be put in the ground once they’ve rebuilt.”

“You don’t even know that that will happen.”

“I don’t want to take the chance.”

“Then what are you betting on now?” Kuroo asked, throwing his hands around as if it would help make his point any clearer. “You’re betting on a position you just acquired a year ago? You’re betting on the weakness of Aoba Johsai and the hope that Fukurodani will stay neutral?”

“Fukurodani  _ will _ stay neutral,” Daichi assured him. “They always have. They’ve never gotten involved in any conflicts.”

“Well I know for a fact they won’t pick our side if we’re the ones to start something, and if Fukurodani decides helping Aoba Johsai will benefit them more than staying neutral, Karasuno is fucked. That’s a big chance you’re taking,” Kuroo said, shaking his head. “Fukurodani is the most powerful of all the syndicates with their numbers and that intelligence agent of theirs. We’re lucky they haven’t gotten involved in anything so far.”

“It’ll be over as quickly as it’s started,” Daichi said, but that was bullshit. Daichi was talking about going up against another syndicate like it was nothing but a routine purge without thinking of any of the consequences of doing so. What about that was going to be quick?

“A  _ war _ will be over just like that?” Kuroo asked, raising his eyebrows as if he was amused that Daichi would even think something so ridiculous. He wasn’t amused, he was annoyed. Daichi was talking about starting a literal yakuza war. “I think I’ll hold you to that.”

“Good,” Daichi agreed with a nod. “Because you’ll be going into Aoba Johsai’s territory, Saitama, alone, infiltrating their ranks and digging up information about them. Come one year from now, there won’t even be an Aoba Johsai to fight us on a political level.”

“You better hope so,” Kuroo mumbled. “Because if you’re wrong about this, come one year from now we’ll all be dead.”

* * *

**Part Two: Kenma**

* * *

The body dropped at the sound of a gun firing.

It hit the ground with a thud and a silence followed as everyone stared. After a few seconds of silence, a small puddle of blood began to form underneath the body’s head, dribbling across the concrete floor.

“Six out of ten.”

“Six out of ten?! I got him between the eyes!”

“Yeah but it didn’t go all the way through. Shots like that are only good if you can get them all the way through.”

Kenma sighed as he looked up from the dead body, towards the window across the empty warehouse. He couldn’t see anything but the corner of the next building over through it, but there was no other window to look out of. 

“No way! That was at least a seven, but _ I  _ would have given it an eight!”

“It was a six at best,” Nishinoya countered with a wave of his hands.

“Kenma!” Bokuto called, turning all eyes in the room on him. “Back me up! That was totally at least a seven.”

Kenma tore his eyes away from the window to take in the room. Bokuto, Nishinoya, and three other Fukurodani men were all watching the conversation unfold, looking at him and expecting an answer from him. The dead body sat still on the ground in front of him, having paid the price for going back on a deal and trying to sell their shit. He supposed it was as good of a situation as any to turn into a game, after all what else did the yakuza do but smuggle illegal drugs and kill people?

He looked over the body, how it had landed, and where the bullet had hit. “Six and a half,” he decided quietly, and while Nishinoya beamed and Bokuto deflated, the other three across the room sent him nasty looks. He didn’t lift his eyes to acknowledge them.

The door off to the side of the building swung open before Bokuto could complain any more. He instantly perked up like a dog hearing the sound of a squirrel running around as he looked to the door. 

In walked the epitome of calm and collected, at least when compared to Bokuto. Bokuto had ripped jeans and a large hoodie on, part of which was stained with blood from at least three different occasions, but he didn’t bother getting a new one because ‘this one is special.’ Meanwhile, Akaashi wore a three piece suit with newly polished shoes and his hair done up. He was clearly wearing makeup, and he looked like he belonged at a stockholder’s meeting like all the other fancy Aoba Johsai and Karasuno executives. Tsukishima and Yamaguchi came in at his side, each dressed similarly but in their own way. Yamaguchi’s suit had a nice cream colored vest with a lighter toned jacket, meanwhile Tsukishima didn’t even have a suit jacket, just a black vest over a white button up. They all looked kind of prissy, to be honest.

“Akaashi!” Bokuto yelled the second it had clicked in his mind who had come in, as if Kenma would have allowed anyone else to just waltz in here. Of course he had known Akaashi was coming, and he had known exactly who he was coming with.

“Bokuto-san,” Akaashi greeted with just a slight tip of his head, before looking past him to observe the dead body. “Bokuto-san, who is this?”

“Oh, Hiroyuki,” Bokuto introduced, as if it mattered. Akaashi knew well enough who the person dead on the floor was, he was just dancing around the subject of asking why Hiroyuki was dead instead of alive like he was supposed to be considering they had a meeting planned for right now to discuss something Kenma didn’t care to find out beforehand.

“And why is Hiroyuki dead?” Akaashi asked in a manner like he was tired of this conversation already.

“Because I killed him?”

“Of course, that much is obvious,” Tsukishima replied comfortably from Akaashi’s side, glancing down at the body. “I think he’s rather curious why you killed him, assuming you had an actual reason this time.”

“Sorry, and what did you need him for?” Kenma spoke up toward Tsukishima, tilting his head. Nishinoya’s head practically did a 180 as he turned to look at Kenma who was already known for doing whatever he pleased and yet it didn’t stop his brothers from being shocked every single time he did something out of line.

Tsukishima quirked his brow up, unamused. Kenma raised one in return as if they were silently communicating. 

“He’s dead because he stole our shit and tried to pawn it off,” Nishinoya spoke for Bokuto, chin held high and chest puffed out. Kenma almost wanted to scoff at him for that show of… whatever that was supposed to be.

“You kill everyone that steals your drugs? It’s hard to believe all of Chiba isn’t dead yet with how easy you make it for them,” Tsukishima contributed, and there was merit to his words. Fukurodani didn’t exactly pride themselves on their security.

“Not everyone, just the ones you’re interested in gaining something from,” Kenma spoke up again, and once more he had every single person in the room looking at him.

“That intelligence agent of yours sure does their fair share of work,” Akaashi commented, his words being directed at Bokuto but his eyes still lingering on Kenma. Kenma just raised both of his brows in amusement at Akaashi, silently applauding him for changing the subject so subtly. “You knew we’d come?”

“Of course, I missed you Akaashi!” That was a lie. While Bokuto probably did miss Akaashi since he loved playing with him so much and would rant for hours about it every single time afterwards, he had no idea Akaashi even had a connection to Hiroyuki. Nobody else had to know that, though.

Akaashi sighed like he had a headache forming. “I needed Hiroyuki alive.”

“Well I wanted him dead. You should have come earlier,” Bokuto decided with a heavy shrug. 

“Any reason you needed a drug smuggler working against Fukurodani alive?” Nishinoya chimed in, as if he had also been aware of the connection between Akaashi and Hiroyuki, which he hadn’t been. 

“Oh? Your agent didn’t tell you that?” Tsukishima pressed.

“Sadly our agent doesn’t seem to give a fuck why you do what you do,” Kenma chipped in, lifting his head to see Tsukishima better. “Would you be so kind as to tell us? We told you why  _ we _ were here. You should play fair.”

“Don’t,” Akaashi whispered to Tsukishima with a shake of his head, clearly tired of Fukurodani egging them on. He turned his eyes to Kenma next as if to test whether or not he would press any further, but Kenma bowed his head in respect to the kumicho’s decision, pushing himself off of the cargo box he had been comfortably seated on. 

“Where are you going?” Tsukishima called out as Kenma turned around and walked toward the back door behind the rest of the Fukurodani men.

“To piss,” he called back simply, stepping out away from the conflict. Normally he wouldn’t just leave Bokuto exposed like that, but him and Akaashi were no threat to each other. As many times as they had interfered in each other’s business, even before Akaashi had been promoted, they had never posed any threat to each other, so in a weird way Kenma trusted him.

He walked around the entire building, ducking under the windows, until he came around to the front where Akaashi’s cars were with all the other Aoba Johsai men waiting for them. They all turned to look as he approached.

“Well would you look at that,” one of them called out, smirking at Kenma when he stopped walking. “It’s Bokuto’s shadow. The Fukurodani bastard must be here.”

There were three cars with Akaashi, which he most likely hadn’t been driving himself. Akaashi probably rode with both Tsukishima and Yamaguchi, so the extra men that had come had come prepared for conflict with whatever arrangement they had with Hiroyuki. For that importance, Hiroyuki must have had something Akaashi wanted, and in his current predicament that likely wasn’t Fukurodani’s drugs. Hiroyuki worked with gangs outside of the yakuza, so he wasn’t partnered with Aoba Johsai in any way, nor did he have enough influence to warrant this many people to follow Akaashi to a deal like this. There was also the fact that Akaashi had come to make the deal himself instead of sending Tsukishima to do it on his behalf. Reasonably, that meant Hiroyuki had probably gained some sensitive information related to the yakuza Akaashi had wanted to hear for himself, but it could have also been a trap. Information enticing enough to drag Akaashi out into Tokyo? Easy. Information on the factions that broke away from Aoba Johsai, which Hiroyuki would have had easy access to.

“I just came here to piss,” Kenma stated, only two seconds having passed since he planted his feet where he stood. “Are you going to follow me if I go back around to the other side of the building or can I piss in private?”

“You’re a boy. Pull it out right here,” one of the men joked, but Kenma wanted to castrate him the second those words left his mouth paired with that smirk. Kenma knew that look well enough not to have to dig too deep into it. “Unless… you’re not?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know,” was all Kenma said before turning around to return to the backside of the building where he had come from. He didn’t actually need to relieve himself, he just wanted to know what Akaashi had come for. 

As he rounded the side of the building he heard the back door open, several sets of footsteps walking out onto the dirt that surrounded the building. 

“I just don’t understand why Bokuto brings him everywhere.”

Kenma rolled his eyes as he continued walking. It was those three morons from the drug gang Bokuto and Nishinoya insisted come with them today.

“I know, right? Who does he think he is, talking to Aoba Johsai guys like that? He’s probably embarrassing Bokuto.”  _ Who do you think you are trashing our kumicho when you’re as important as a grain of sand? _ Kenma countered in his head with another exaggerated roll of his eyes.

He didn’t stop before rounding the corner, watching from the edges of his vision as all three of them froze at the sight of him, probably worried he had overheard them. “If you’re worried I’m embarrassing Bokuto then tell him,” Kenma suggested, walking past them with the utmost certainty that they would not so much as bring Kenma up in conversation to Bokuto. 

Kenma walked right over to the car he and Bokuto had come in together, pulling open the passenger door and shoving himself inside. It only took about five more minutes for Bokuto and Nishinoya to come out of the building, Nishinoya skipping over to his motorcycle while Bokuto waved goodbye to the three other guys and made his way over to the car. He pulled the door open, widening his eyes at Kenma already in the car before pulling himself inside and closing the door behind him.

“Where did you go?” Bokuto asked, shoving the keys into the car and starting it up.

“To piss,” he replied simply, leaning back in his seat as Bokuto pulled away from the warehouse. Nishinoya, of course, sped ahead of them just to show off, and Bokuto let out a laugh like he thought Nishinoya was the funniest person in the world. 

Kenma tilted his head to look out the window, watching the buildings fly by. He felt exhausted even though he had hardly done anything. “Hiroyuki had information on the Aoba Johsai factions breaking away from Akaashi’s leadership, that’s why they came.”

“Kenma you’re so mean!” Bokuto whined from behind the wheel. “Why didn’t you tell me Akaashi was coming?!”

“I only found out this morning, and you’ve been with Noya all day. I figured it wasn’t important enough to warrant pulling you away,” Kenma explained with no enthusiasm, shrugging his shoulders.

“Why not? I think Akaashi is pretty important!” he rambled with a pout.

“Incase you’re unaware, Bokuto, everyone just thinks I’m your pet,” Kenma mumbled. “If I pulled you away in front of everyone they would just get suspicious.” Kenma turned to face Bokuto only to see a heavy pout of his lips. He seemed to be completely absorbed in trying to figure out how that was even possible. Kenma didn’t understand why it was so hard to understand; he thought it was rather obvious. 

“But you’re not.”

“I know I’m not, but they think I am.”

“Well why don’t you tell them you’re not?”

“Because I don’t have the energy to argue with them when their opinion isn’t important enough to affect anything anyway,” Kenma explained, watching Bokuto’s expression shift carefully. He pursed his lips as he kept his eyes on the road, but it almost felt like he was still staring at him. “What?”

“If you told them what you do for Fukurodani maybe they wouldn’t think that.”

“I’m not telling them,” Kenma reminded him. Bokuto nodded in understanding, though he probably would argue the same point two weeks later. That was the deal, though. Bokuto knew it the day they created their arrangement and it had stuck for all the years they had known each other. The second anyone else found out what he did, he was out.

Kenma cleared his throat, indicating he was going to change the topic because he was uncomfortable with the current one. He neither liked seeing Bokuto upset nor did he like arguing with him about something that actually mattered. 

“Anyways,” Kenma mumbled, “have you started preparing for the meeting at Kawa Miru?” 

“Kawa Miru? Why do I have to start getting ready for that now? It’s not for a few more months.”

Kenma sighed. “I know, but you need to have an idea of what you’re going to say when you’re there. It’ll be the first Kawa Miru with Akaashi and Daichi. You won’t just be there because you’ve been acknowledged this time, you’ll be there because you have just as much weight as the other two syndicates. That’s important.”

“But they only talk about politics at those meetings,” Bokuto whined, pouting again.

“The previous Kumichos did, but this time it’s going to be different,” Kenma explained, motioning with his hands a bit as he tried to explain his thoughts. “Those old men had a dynamic with each other for decades. Akaashi and Daichi barely know each other. They need to find middle ground between their syndicates, and they’re going to have to acknowledge you now as well. Daichi doesn’t know much about you and he’s going to need to establish some rapport if he plans on making any moves towards keeping the neutrality between our syndicates.”

“What? Why?” Bokuto asked, furrowing his brows. “I don’t care about Karasuno.”

“Exactly. Your attention is on Aoba Johsai, specifically Akaashi, which might worry Daichi.”

“I don’t care about Daichi.”

“And yet I’m sure Daichi cares a great deal about you,” Kenma continued, shrugging his shoulders. “It might be best to give Akaashi a break for a while. I know you’re just excited to have another kumicho to talk to that actually acts like you’re a kumicho, but with the Kawa Miru coming up it might be risky to keep doing that until you can work out the details with Daichi.”

Bokuto let out a loud whine and deflated as he drove. Kenma looked him over carefully to assess whether or not he might accidentally crash the car or not before deciding he didn’t care. “I hate politics.”

Kenma sighed, but his mouth twitched up in a smile as he turned away from Bokuto’s deflation. “That’s what I’m here for.”

“Will you walk in with me this time?” 

Kenma actually did let out a small laugh at that. “Absolutely not.”

“Kenma!” 

“Daichi is going to walk in with Iwaizumi and Terushima, Akaashi is going to walk in with Tsukishima and Oikawa, and you want to walk in with me? Bokuto, everyone is bringing their most intimidating and best people.”

Bokuto paused for a moment. “Okay, then who should I bring?”

“Kageyama and Kiyoko.”

“Kenma!” Bokuto whined again, and Kenma could only roll his eyes this time and pat Bokuto on the shoulder. “Kageyama doesn’t do anything and Kiyoko is too straightforward!”

“You can just say they’re boring.”

“No, that’s mean.”

“Oh my god, Bokuto-”

“I think it’d be better if I walked in with just you,” Bokuto decided easily, pushing himself back up in his seat. “You could outsmart all of them at the same time and with you there I wouldn’t even have to worry about messing up in front of them.”

Kenma just patted Bokuto’s shoulder again. “Kageyama and Kiyoko are good at what they do. You should do most of the talking anyways. I’ll help you prepare.”

“Or you could just walk in with me.”

“You can’t bring a pet into the Kawa Miru, Bokuto. You have to bring people who can represent you. Kageyama and Kiyoko can do that. Would I send you in with anyone incapable?”

“You’re not my pet, you’re the reason Fukurodani exists. You’re more qualified than everyone in Fukurodani combined,” Bokuto continued to whine, and at this point Kenma was just waiting for him to get it all out of his system. “Come to Kawa Miru with me.”

“Bokuto, no.”

“Please.”

“No.”

“What if I order you to come with me?”

“Order me to do something, I dare you,” Kenma pushed, Bokuto immediately breaking down into a fit of giggles. Kenma followed with a bittersweet smile of his own. The lightheartedness of the conversation seemed to shift Bokuto’s attention for the moment as he went back to focusing on driving, and Kenma just hoped that meant he was done having the conversation.

It wasn’t that Kenma thought he couldn’t represent Bokuto during the Kawa Miru; he’d be more than capable. Like Bokuto said, he’d probably be the most capable out of everyone, and that had nothing to do with his loyalties or any skills he had, it was just because of practice and what he had been doing for years now, perfected and flawless to an extent. 

But Bokuto wanted him to represent him at the Kawa Miru knowing everyone in Fukurodani had subtle suspicions about him that they refused to bring to Bokuto’s attention out of pure fear that he would hate them for it, as if Bokuto could hate anyone. And sure, telling everyone how much he really contributed to the syndicate might put him more in their favor, but it would be dangerous. Anyone could run their mouths—gossip was gossip and if Kenma knew anything from his years of taking advantage of loud mouthed bastards it was that gossip always traveled, and it was usually right to some extent. If any of them found out who Kenma really was he would have every yakuza member within four prefectures on his ass, and not to mention all of his Fukurodani brothers would probably see him as nothing more than a liar in a personal sense.

The Kawa Miru was important, this one more than any other, but Kenma couldn’t risk representing Bokuto. It was one meal, once a year, but that didn’t mean it would be impossible for Bokuto to ever meet the other kumicho’s outside of this one meeting. If today proved anything, it was almost too easy, but Kenma had already known that. 

Kageyama and Kiyoko would represent Bokuto perfectly fine, and he would provide them with all the information they needed to do so—anonymously of course. He would handle everything just as he had always done and everything would work out fine, just like it always had. 

“Hey, Kenma,” Bokuto mumbled, and in lieu of responding Kenma merely turned his head to face the other man. His voice was much more mellow now, and Kenma had a feeling all of that serious talk had caused him to think a bit too much. “Are you sure we’ll be prepared enough for this Kawa Miru?”

“Of course,” Kenma replied instantly. Bokuto nodded and went back to focusing on driving as if Kenma’s reassurance had calmed his thoughts at all, which it definitely didn’t. 

But Kenma had lied. He wasn’t sure they would be prepared enough for this Kawa Miru, and no matter how many times he told himself he would handle it and everything would be fine, the fact remained that this one would be different than any other one had been before.

He felt rather uneasy about it.

That was never a good thing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi everyone! This is my first Haikyuu fic I hope you all enjoy it! Right now I'm planning to update every Wednesday


	2. Chapter Two

**Part One: Kuroo**

* * *

Kuroo shifted another wooden crate onto the dolly cart with a huff of breath and a bead of sweat dripping down his forehead. He had thought after a while of loading unnecessarily heavy boxes he would just get used to it, but it felt more like the boxes just kept getting heavier as the days went on.

Two weeks. He had been in Saitama working under a false identity for one of Aoba Johsai’s illegal arms trading warehouses for two weeks now. 

When Daichi had told him he would be going undercover working for Aoba Johsai he thought he would be further into the syndicate than a shoddy, low level warehouse on the outskirts of Aoba Johsai’s prefecture. Granted, he had no interest in being any further into the syndicate because being this far in was already breaking the syndicates’ agreed upon rules and he could be killed for that, but at least if he was further in he would be risking his life and identity for something more worthwhile than rumors and gossip.

All anyone talked about at this warehouse was Akaashi’s succession, and it wasn’t like Kuroo hadn’t learned a lot just from that. It just wasn’t enough to bring back to Daichi, the man who wanted to start a war with them.

Kuroo had known there were factions breaking off from Akaashi’s leadership and opposing his succession, but what he didn’t know was that those factions had rallied behind another person. For the past year he had been under the assumption that those groups of people had just been denying Akaashi’s leadership out of disdain for the boy. What Kuroo hadn’t expected was the factions to be organized, choosing their leader themselves and preparing to stand behind him when  _ he _ made the move against Akaashi.

It certainly wasn’t useless information. If the situation with Akaashi’s leadership was worse than everyone thought, it would be even more of a reason for Karasuno to attack them since they were practically divided in half fighting already. 

And he knew he should be happy for being the one to get this information, for being able to go back to Daichi and say ‘I found something that’s going to help us’, and yet he just felt sick to his stomach. He didn’t agree with what Daichi was doing in the first place, but by going back and giving Daichi all the information he had he would only be encouraging him. Akaashi and all of his men would suffer because Daichi was greedy and scared of something that probably wouldn’t even happen.

He didn’t really know any Aoba Johsai men, so it wasn’t that he felt guilty towards them personally, he just didn’t think they all deserved to go through hell when they were already struggling as it was. 

“Oi, Shiro! Take a break man!” 

Kuroo looked up from the box in front of him, nodding his head at one of his coworkers, Itsuki. He was a nice man with orange tinted hair and freckles all over his face. He looked younger than he was and everyone in the warehouse treated him like their son, but he was still well respected and people listened to him. 

Kuroo tapped the top of the crate as he moved around it, smiling at Itsuki and making his way over to him. Itsuki threw his arm around him and led him over to the corner of the warehouse where everyone took breaks and ate their lunches, littered with broken crates and discarded cigarette butts, but it wasn’t the worst place to sit back and rest their legs in. Kuroo let Itsuki drag him along even though the boy was much shorter than him. It was awkward, but the laugh Itsuki let out as he tried his very best to pull Kuroo gave him a smile of his own. 

Out of everyone at the warehouse, Itsuki was definitely his favorite, but he would never tell the other guys that. 

“Itsuki! Shiro! Took you two long enough!” one of the older men, Taichi, called out with a coarse roar as the two approached the area of empty wooden crates that created a makeshift table for the lot of them, with smaller plastic crates scattered around as chairs. Taichi reached behind himself and pulled another plastic crate towards the center for them since there was only one free one, and Itsuki ran over to take it. Kuroo smiled at the men and took his seat beside his friend.

It took a while to adjust to his new identity. He hated the name, partly because it was just the opposite of his real name and also because Iwaizumi was the one that picked it and he picked it specifically because he knew Kuroo would hate it. A few times Taichi and Itsuki had called his name and he had almost forgotten to react, but Taichi just blamed it on him being an absent minded kid. He wasn’t exactly sure why they all insisted on calling him a kid, much like with Itsuki, because the two of them were very clearly adults, but that was another thing he had grown used to. 

“What are you old hags doing lazing around?” Itsuki asked with a laugh that caused everyone around the table to laugh with him. Kuroo found himself chuckling and smiling at the boy, who looked back at him and flashed a smile.

“Not lazing around! We’re on break!” one of the other men Taichi’s age, Koji, announced, raising his hand with a can of sake and downing it.

“For the third time today?” Itsuki asked, and Koji barked out a loud laugh. 

“Watch it kid!” 

“Yeah, Itsuki,” Kuroo chimed in with a devilish smile as everyone turned to him, “it’s his  _ fourth _ break today, get it right.”

“Oi, they don’t pay me enough to not take four breaks a day,” Koji argued with a shrug as he lifted the can to his lips again.

“Four? Man we’re only halfway through the day!” Taichi pointed out with another loud laugh. Everyone around the table bursted out into fits of laughter and giggles. 

“And I’ll take four more breaks by the time the day is over! Shiro and Itsuki are doing all the work for us!”

“If you appreciate us so much give us your pay,” Itsuki demanded instantly, leaning forward with a smile. 

“Absolutely fucking not.”

“Damn, so close,” Itsuki whispered in Kuroo’s direction, and he couldn’t help but huff out a laugh at that. Then Itsuki turned to Koji and Taichi, making sure he had both of their attention before speaking. “Do you think once this power struggle in Aoba Johsai is over we might get a better pay?”

“Doubt it,” Koji admitted, once again drinking. Kuroo wondered how many more breaks it would take for the old man to get drunk again. His record was ten as far as Kuroo had seen but that was saying a lot since Kuroo had, again, only been here for two weeks.

“Why would we get a better pay? I don’t think the higher ranks of Aoba Johsai really give a shit about a weapons warehouse as unimportant as this one,” Kuroo chipped in, turning to Itsuki to make his point.

Itsuki shrugged. “Under Akaashi, yes, but Ushijima might care more.”

“Tendou is coming today, right?” Taichi cut in, grabbing the alcohol from out of Koji’s hands and tossing it across the room while Koji gaped at him. Taichi turned to Koji with a stern look. “You can’t get drunk if Tendou’s coming.”

“Hell, why didn’t you tell me earlier?!”

“Who’s Tendou?”

All eyes in the room turned to face Kuroo, but he didn’t feel like he had done anything wrong by asking that question. He knew the high rankers of Aoba Johsai, including most of Akaashi’s closest brothers who he would have to be the most cautious of, but he knew very little about Ushijima’s people. 

Ushijima, Akaashi’s rival.

He knew who Ushijima was. The man was part of the Aoba Johsai main family and had worked with Akaashi on an equal playing field for a greater part of their time together. It made perfect sense that Ushijima would rise to claim the title of kumicho in place of Akaashi, but unfortunately Kuroo hadn’t known anything about Ushijima’s involvement in the power struggle before coming to Saitama, so he hadn’t researched any of Ushijima’s underlings. 

“You don’t know who Tendou is?” Taichi asked, raising his eyebrows.

Kuroo shrugged as Itsuki spoke for him. “Shiro only came to us two weeks ago. He’s hardly had much experience within Aoba Johsai so far.” Kuroo nodded to agree.

Koji sighed, leaning his head back. “Tendou is Ushijima’s right hand.”

Okay, Kuroo should have known that. Granted, his focus hadn’t been on Ushijima in the slightest, but he still should have known that. 

“He’s a lot like Oikawa in a sense, do you know who that is?” Itsuki asked, and just to play the part of a stupid new guy, he shook his head no. Itsuki’s eyes narrowed in disgust. “He’s Akaashi’s right hand. A lot of people think it’s Tsukishima, this mean looking guy that doesn’t have a single emotion, but it’s not. It’s Oikawa. He’s a twink with an addiction to killing and he doesn’t give a shit about anyone or anything.”

“I’ve heard he’s killed people for looking at him the wrong way,” Taichi threw in with a nod. 

It was weird to get a perspective on Oikawa from outside Karasuno and Kanagawa. In Kanagawa, everyone knew Oikawa’s name if they had anything to do with the yakuza. Oikawa was famous for being brutal, unpredictable, and unkillable. He was Akaashi’s biggest weapon, just like the intelligence agent was Fukurodani’s biggest weapon. The only problem was the intelligence agent had beaten Oikawa before, but nobody else had. It just went to show how dangerous that man was if only one person had ever gotten the upper hand over him.

But Kuroo knew everyone in Fukurodani was so proud of their intelligence agent that they would boast about them at any opportunity, so he figured Aoba Johsai would be proud of Oikawa. It was strange to know they feared him just as much as the Karasuno family did. 

Kuroo furrowed his brows. “But you said Tendou is like Oikawa, so do you not like him either?”

Taichi shrugged. “Business is business. Tendou wouldn’t kill us all because he got bored, Oikawa would. Plus, Oikawa works for Akaashi and has taken a few mildly important people down just for talking shit behind his boss’s back. Tendou fights for Ushijima, so he’d hear our arguments.”

“Arguments?” Kuroo asked, dread sinking in his stomach. He somehow always got involved in conflict didn’t he? 

“We’re going to tell Tendou we fight for Ushijima,” Itsuki announced with a happy smile on his face, but Kuroo wasn’t sure that was something to be proud of. He wanted to tell them that if they officially chose a side and went against Akaashi they could be targeted, but that logic was too advanced for someone as new as he was supposed to be, and it would seem off that he would know anything about yakuza politics. 

“Why?” he asked instead, tilting his head at Itsuki.

“Because we want to help get Akaashi out of Aoba Johsai. He doesn’t deserve it.”

“And Ushijima does?” Kuroo asked, realizing too late what exactly had just come out of his mouth. His eyes widened in shock as Itsuki just stared at him. “I- I mean I’m not saying he does or doesn’t, I don’t really know anything about this situation, I’m just trying to understand it.”

Koji let out a laugh. “We know, Shiro, no worries. We know you’d side with us when the time comes, right?”

Kuroo nodded. “Of course,” he said, but he wasn’t sure he meant it. If they planned on telling Tendou about this today, Kuroo would obviously have to stand by their sides and agree, but whether he agreed with them or not his position would still be more dangerous. Besides, not that Kuroo cared to any great amount about who held the title of kumicho in Aoba Johsai, but to his knowledge Akaashi hadn’t done anything wrong. The man was a prodigy in the political field, knew his way around stocks better than anyone else, could look the part, and knew how to organize groups. Though he was having a hard time controlling his subordinates, that was hardly his fault in the current state. What had Akaashi done to deserve half of his people rioting against him to the point where they were risking their own lives just to make a statement about it?

“So… what are you going to tell Tendou exactly?”

Kuroo didn’t like the way his hairs stood up on the back of his neck right after he asked that question. Taichi and Koji passed looks between each other trying to figure out who should answer that question, but the drone of bustling in the warehouse behind them all had quieted down. They definitely hadn’t all heard him ask his question, and his question wasn’t scandalous enough to hush an entire room anyways. Taichi and Koji didn’t even seem to notice. Kuroo looked to his side at Itsuki who was watching Kuroo with a smile on his face, his eyes flickering between Koji and Taichi waiting for one of them to answer his question. 

None of them noticed. Kuroo would say it was just because he wasn’t used to being in the warehouse and this was common, but it wasn’t. Kuroo knew when his instincts were telling him something was wrong, and something was very wrong right now. 

Koji was the one that finally answered.

“We’re gonna tell Tendou that Akaashi and Oikawa can go to hell, both of them!”

“Oh? Can we now?”

Itsuki nearly knocked himself over with how fast he spun around, eyes going wide at the sight of the man behind them. Koji fell back on his ass and knocked over three more crates with him, and Taichi merely sat still, not even bothering to turn around for fear of what he knew he would see.

Kuroo turned around slowly. He moved his head first, waiting until he could see the balcony of the top floor of the building before spinning the rest of his body around to face the one person he had hoped to never have to deal with in his life. 

Oikawa Tooru.

The man stood on the balcony like he owned the building, which in a sense he technically did. He stood completely alone with a cocky grin on his face and lidded eyes that made him look like a predator looking down on his prey. His hair was swept all over the place like he had just gotten out of a fight and hadn’t bothered to fix it aside from running his fingers through it and he wore only black and dark reds, easy colors to hide stains. 

“Please, don’t shut up now, go on!” Oikawa encouraged, his voice echoing loudly over the now dead silent warehouse as he pushed himself away from the metal railing, letting his fingers slide across it as he guided himself towards the staircase. 

Kuroo watched every step he took, analyzing every aspect of the way he looked and how he presented himself. His maroon jacket stuck out slightly more on one side of his hip meaning he was carrying, but he could have one in the back of his waistband too knowing Oikawa’s habits. He likely also had knives easily accessible to himself, but he didn’t have anyone with him. It made sense, after all. If Oikawa had come instead of Tendou, which would make more sense especially if this was an Aoba Johsai weapons managing warehouse since Akaashi wouldn’t trust that to one of Ushijima’s subordinates, then he wouldn’t have come expecting an event like this. There were no windows in this area of the building, so he couldn’t have a decent sniper, but he hadn’t come in with anyone either. 

Oikawa was actually outnumbered by Ushijima’s supporters now, and Kuroo was left extremely curious of what he planned to do about that considering the man must have already realized the situation himself, and yet he still walked in completely confident in himself.

“What?” Oikawa continued to prod as he reached the bottom of the staircase, tilting his head with an overdramatic and fake pout. “Got nothing to say anymore? You were doing so well earlier, though! Akaashi and I can go to hell, you’re going to side with Ushijima, and what, you’re going to do that through Tendou?” Oikawa continued to walk forward until he was standing right in front of their table, making sure to greet each and every one of them with eye contact that sunk deep underneath Kuroo’s skin. “You really are revolutionaries. Truly, I’m sure his other supporters will look up to you all after today.”

The best course of action here, in theory, would be for everyone in this warehouse to pull their weapons and trap Oikawa. Kuroo knew this, and yet he also knew not many people here actually had more than pocket knives, and even then Oikawa was probably trained well enough to take down half of them or more. Kuroo himself had a gun on him, and if he got one good shot he could probably take him down, but he wasn’t going to do that. Kuroo came here to get information, not to take out Oikawa and potentially initiate that war he was still trying not to think too hard about.

If the people with him now had been Karasuno brothers, Kuroo would have bet on the final decision going to Iwaizumi, and therefore himself as well. Kuroo could influence the decision Iwaizumi would make, which would be trapping Oikawa, and they could probably take him out with minimal casualties. But the problem here was that these people with him weren’t Karasuno members. These guys were low income yakuza wannabes that Aoba Johsai picked up off the streets for cheap labor, who felt more involved in the conflict than they actually were, and if any of them knew how to shoot it would probably take them at least five shots each to get Oikawa when he started moving. Also Kuroo had no influence over what was going to happen since Iwaizumi wasn’t there.

“Say something,” Oikawa demanded, looking all four of them over again, daring them to make the first move to set them off. Again, if Kuroo had had his way, none of them would say a fucking thing and they would keep Oikawa on the spot, but…

“What are you doing here?”

Kuroo wanted to hit Koji. Hard.

Oikawa let out a laugh that was nothing more than a show of confidence. “What am I doing here? Checking up on this warehouse. You knew someone was coming today.”

“We knew Tendou was coming today,” Koji argued, and Kuroo was getting more irritated by the second because no, Koji had not known that until ten minutes ago and he was giving Oikawa everything he wanted and more which was just an excuse to kill him. 

“And who the fuck told you that? Tendou is with Ushijima in Yamanashi right now. He just left yesterday,” Oikawa pointed out with a raised brow.

Why was Ushijima in Yamanashi, though? That prefecture wasn’t claimed by any of the yakuza, and if anything it was closer to Kanagawa, which was Karasuno’s prefecture. Aoba Johsai owned Saitama, Karasuno owned Kanagawa, and Fukurdani owned Chiba. Tokyo was free ground, but Yamanashi? Yamanashi was nothing to the yakuza, so why would he go there? 

It was possible he was trying to garner support for his claim to Aoba Johsai by claiming another prefecture for himself, but logically involving a whole new prefecture in their conflict would be more effort and a waste of time without actually having the influence Akaashi still technically had. Ushijima being in Yamanashi right now made no sense… unless Oikawa was lying, which was a possibility.

But how could Kuroo possibly point that out without getting a gun to his head and coming off as suspicious? He really couldn’t. And of course everyone else just believed him.

“He’ll come back!” Koji declared loudly, but Oikawa’s smile just grew in response. 

“Oh, I’m sure he will. Too bad you’ll never get the chance to meet him.” It only took a second, but in the blink of an eye Oikawa’s gun was out, cocked, and a bullet was in Koji’s head. Itsuki yelled as he flung himself backwards and Taichi stumbled over with his mouth wide open. Kuroo merely blinked, expecting that outcome. Koji was stupid, but Kuroo still didn’t think he deserved to be shot for it. 

Oikawa’s eyes turned on Kuroo, watching him carefully, and it was then that Kuroo realized he was supposed to be acting like everyone else here and not a trained assassin accustomed to a gun being fired into someone’s head. That was a big slip up. 

“What’s your name?” Oikawa asked, tilting his head at Kuroo like he was merely interested and not trying to gear himself up for a threat. Having someone’s name usually gave their opponents an unspoken power against them because of the mental manipulation they could cause using it. Kuroo already expected that, though, so he really didn’t care if Oikawa knew his fake name or not. 

“Shiro,” he answered simply. 

“Tell me Shiro, why aren’t you afraid right now?” Oikawa asked, taking a step closer to him.

“You’re terrifying,” Kuroo admitted, “but I expected you to do that.”

Oikawa’s smile only grew at that confession. “You think I’m predictable?”

“No, I think what you just did was predictable.”

“Tell me,” Oikawa started, waving the gun in front of him a little as if it was some sort of an unspoken threat, “are you waiting for Tendou to come and save you, too?”

“Step back from our new guy, asshole.”

Kuroo felt the urge to roll his eyes into the back of his head as Taichi stood up and pulled his gun on Oikawa. He had been handling Oikawa fine, baiting him without getting himself killed, but Taichi was going to end up dead at the other end of Oikawa’s gun which was still just loosely hanging from his hand at his side.

Oikawa’s attention turned to Taichi with a sadistic grin on his face. “You’re protecting him? Old man, I’m sorry to break the news to you but Shiro here clearly knows more about the yakuza than you ever will and he’s smart enough not to pick sides against Akaashi, right Shiro?”

Oikawa was giving him a choice right now, the very choice Kuroo had been hoping to avoid making by baiting Oikawa the way he had been. He could either side with the people here and die with them, or he could side with Oikawa and live. And unfortunately for Itsuki and Taichi, Kuroo’s loyalties didn’t lie with them.

Kuroo was up on his feet before any of them could blink, his own gun pulled out from his waistband, cocked, and aimed at Taichi’s head. He heard Itsuki scream something at him, and he could see Taichi fumbling for words out of the corner of his eye, but all of his attention was on Oikawa who looked to be on the verge of bursting out in laughter. 

“Shi- Shiro!” Taichi yelled, and Oikawa really did start laughing at that point. 

“Called it! I knew it!” Oikawa cheered through his laugh. “Shiro, tell me, where did you work before coming to this factory?” 

Kuroo hadn’t prepared a second backstory for himself, but he knew enough about Aoba Johsai to be able to make some believable shit up. “I was a hired hitman working in Hidaka,” he said simply, making sure to hold eye contact with Oikawa the entire time. 

“And what are you doing here?” Oikawa prodded. 

Kuroo only had one answer for this question, but he knew it was going to put him higher on Aoba Johsai’s radar more than he had ever hoped to be, but it wasn’t like he had another option available to him at the moment. “I was trying to find connections within Aoba Johsai so I could get more work.”

Oikawa nodded with a small sound of understanding. “Okay. You want more work? Kill this old man first. I’ll pay you, don’t worry.”

Kuroo liked Taichi. The old man was stupid and rash, but he had been nicer to him than probably anyone in Kanagawa besides Iwaizumi had ever been. Taichi didn’t deserve to die, but Kuroo had a job to do. Daichi was going to get hell from Kuroo when he got back for this. 

Kuroo only took one breath before pulling the trigger, watching Taichi drop dead in front of him. Itsuki screamed as he fell backwards and stumbled over himself, pushing himself back from the scene while Oikawa nearly pissed himself laughing in amusement. 

He could feel his finger aching around the trigger of the gun, knowing he had been the one to take Taichi’s life away from him. It wasn’t like Kuroo wasn’t used to killing, he just wasn’t used to killing people he had gotten to know personally who didn’t deserve to die the way they did.

“I’ll tell you what, Shiro,” Oikawa said as he pulled himself together, stepping up to Kuroo’s side and throwing his arm around his shoulders. Kuroo hated the proximity, but if Oikawa really did like him then it sort of worked out in his favor. “How about, instead of me paying you, you help me take out every single person in this warehouse, find replacements, and then I bring you to the Aoba Johsai house and you work for us instead of nobodies off the streets? You’ll be much richer than you could have ever hoped for. How about that?”

That wasn’t the plan. Going to the Aoba Johsai house had never been the plan. Daichi sent him in for the lowest level of information, for outside sources and small tidbits they could use. If Kuroo went to the Aoba Johsai house he would be fucking himself over, but really if he denied Oikawa now he would risk Oikawa killing him out of boredom or distrust. Kuroo literally did not have a choice right now, and yet he could hear the warning bells going off in his head like crazy. 

He was Karasuno, not Aoba Johsai. 

“Shiro you can’t do this!” Itsuki yelled, tears streaming down his face from where he sat on the floor. 

“What do you say, Shiro?” Oikawa asked with a purr, still hanging off of him.

Kuroo worked for Karasuno. He didn’t work for Aoba Johsai. He was doing this for Karasuno. He would never be a part of Aoba Johsai. 

“Just tell me who to kill.”

***

The traditional ceremony to enter the yakuza was to drink sake from the same cup as the kumicho. Kuroo did this with Daichi’s father when he became a part of the clan, and he did it again with Daichi just a year ago. Drinking the sake meant abandoning his old family completely, of which he had none anyways, and pledging himself to Karasuno, meaning Karasuno itself was his new family. Everyone there was his brother. Karasuno was his family, whether they all got along or not. 

He had been sure about himself then. He had taken the sake with confidence because he knew Daichi would always be his family. He had wanted to be Karasuno, and he had never thought otherwise. 

He meant it when he pledged himself to Karasuno. 

At the time, he thought pledging himself to the yakuza would give him a life worth living. It wasn’t that he regretted that now, but he wasn’t exactly sure he had made the right decision. Involving himself in the yakuza had caused him more pain in his life than good. But if he had to join the yakuza to keep himself alive, the choice to join Karasuno was indisputable. They were his family. Daichi was his family.  _ Iwaizumi _ was his family. 

He never thought he would find himself standing in front of another kumicho, drinking another cup of sake, and pledging himself to anyone other than Daichi. Karasuno was supposed to be his family, but drinking from the same cup as a kumicho meant abandoning his old family completely. Whether he meant to be there or not, even if he had no choice and it was quite literally this or death, he still drank the sake.

He stood in front of a group of strangers and pledged fidelity to a man he had only ever heard about, and he renounced Karasuno as his family and became part of Aoba Johsai all in one night. 

It didn’t matter what he did, wished he had done, or regretted. 

Kuroo had renounced Karasuno. He was officially part of Aoba Johsai now, and there was nothing he could do about it. 

* * *

**Part Two: Kenma**

* * *

Kenma bit into his banana as he leaned back on the bench, phone in his other hand open on some book he wasn’t reading and didn’t even know the title of. A black baseball cap hugged his head with his hair tucked up into it, but he wasn’t wearing glasses since his half blonde hair was his only defining trait anyway.

He watched diligently, knowing not a single pair of eyes was focused on him, as Yamamoto and Shibayama continued scoping out the area. Both of them were bland when it came to appearances, but Kenma recognized them regardless. Karasuno men. 

There was nothing suspicious about Karasuno men being in Tokyo, after all Kenma was Fukurodani but he was in Tokyo right now, too. The interesting thing was that this wasn’t the first, second, or even third time he had seen Yamamoto and Shibayama in this specific area of Tokyo in the past week. They weren’t just wandering around Tokyo doing business for Karasuno, they were observing the borders of Tokyo and Saitama, and that was interesting. Kenma had also seen Inuoka around a few times, and he had caught Daishou lurking around once. He saw them at different times, never too many of them at once, but it wasn’t just the main Karasuno household members. He saw lower level men working for Karasuno lurking around the borders as well, a few he recognized, a few he suspected, and one he knew because he questioned them before killing them and faking a hit and run.

Karasuno was purposefully staying around Aoba Johsai’s borders, and since they were doing such a good job at spacing it out over the past two weeks, probably longer, nobody had seemed to notice. No Aoba Johsai men in the area seemed outwardly worried or suspicious and he hadn’t heard anything from Aoba Johsai on the matter. 

He watched the two men as they walked, confirming for himself that they were walking the same route they had the last time he had seen them over in this area, before deciding there was no reason to hang around and risk getting caught. He pocketed his phone and pushed himself up from the bench he had made himself comfortable on, lifting his arms to stretch before turning and walking away. He took a bus back to the border of Chiba and from there he took another bus a bit further in. At the last stop he dug his skateboard out from under the bush he always left it hidden in and rode it the rest of the way back to the main house. He shed his disguise in a different bush right outside the house before walking in, ruffling his hair a bit so it didn’t appear too flat. 

“Kenma! You’re back!” Hinata greeted loudly. Kenma nodded his head to acknowledge the boy as he made his way into the house.

“Where’s Bokuto?” he asked instantly, not bothering to greet Hinata in return, but the boy remained unphased by it. 

“He’s out with Kiyoko right now,” Hinata explained, jumping in front of Kenma so he couldn’t go anywhere. “But he said when you came back you should come with Kageyama and me!”

“Why?” Kenma asked, racking his brain for what those two were supposed to be doing today. They were scheduled to deal with someone who had been trying to raise prices on their products despite the protections Fukurodani gave them, but Kenma didn’t see why he had to babysit them on that job. 

Hinata’s enthusiastic demeanor dropped as he seemed to think. “Uh, I don’t know. He just said you needed to clear your head so you should come.”

That bastard. So what if he hadn’t been home consistently within the past week? So what if he continued to go into Tokyo without an explanation every single day? So maybe he hadn’t come home one night because he wanted to watch the border overnight, and maybe he hadn’t told Bokuto a damn thing about it because he didn’t want to say anything before he had all the facts, but why did Bokuto need to disrupt his schedule by having him go with Kageyama and Hinata who were perfectly capable of handling this meeting on their own? 

“I-” Kenma started, prepared to tell Hinata he was busy, but Hinata always looked at him with so much trust and kindness that nobody else really bothered with that shoving him off so easily made him feel slightly guilty. Kenma swallowed his previous words. “Sorry Hinata, but I think Bokuto was just worried because I-”

“Because you haven’t been home?” Hinata asked with wide eyes, and every time he did that it just made Kenma feel like even more of a bad person for constantly lying to him.

“Yeah,” he answered simply.

“Were have you been? Usually you’re always with Bokuto but for the past week you’ve been out by yourself.” 

Kenma cleared his throat. “I’ve been working with some of our distributors in Tokyo,” he said, which wasn’t technically a lie. He had dedicated a whole day to asking around their drug dealers who dealt in Saitama and Kanagawa to see if they had heard about anything going on, and he had gotten plenty of information but none that he was specifically looking for. He was more updated on the Aoba Johsai power struggle situation though, so that was always a plus. 

“But Bokuto keeps asking where you are… he never knows.”

This was the most difficult part of keeping what he did a secret. Everyone always assumed he stuck to Bokuto’s side like glue when in actuality he went out and did more field work than Bokuto ever had, but he always had to lie about what he was doing, and situations like this made it complicated. 

“I’ve been meaning to do it for a while now, I guess I just forgot to mention it to him,” Kenma lied, shrugging. Hinata opened his mouth, probably to ask another question, but Kenma wasn’t sure how many more terrible lies he could come up with. “So where are we going?” he asked before Hinata had the chance.

Hinata’s face lit up, his past worries instantly forgotten. “With Kageyama to pressure some guy into cooperating with us!” 

Kenma already knew that. “Cool,” he said anyways, gesturing for Hinata to lead the way. He ran around the house for a second looking for Kageyama and dragged him out from wherever he had been. They all piled into one of the cars, Kenma in the back and the other two in the front, and started on their way to Tokyo. 

Hinata kept trying to make conversation about what they were going to do and what had been going on lately, but Kageyama kept giving Kenma looks through the rearview mirror like he had something to say, and Kenma was just waiting for him to say it. To put it nicely, Kageyama was a pain in Kenma’s ass. At least he could lie to everyone else, but Kageyama questioned his lies like it was his job to do so. If Kageyama ever caught him doing anything secretive it became a nightmare to deal with, and trying to get Kageyama to trust anything he said was even harder. 

“And so when we get there it’s gonna be all like boom and wham and woaahhh!” Hinata continued, not having shut up since he got in the car, but Kenma wasn’t even sure what he was talking about anymore. 

“Kenma, why does Bokuto keep you around?” 

“And then-  _ Kageyama! _ ” Hinata yelled, hitting him on the arm despite the fact that Kageyama was the one driving. 

Kenma wasn’t expecting Kageyama to be that blunt, but he had still seen that coming about a mile away. “For reasons,” he answered simply.

“Yeah but you never do anything on your own.”

“Yes he does!” Hinata argued, well… more like yelled. “He’s been working with gangs in Tokyo!” 

“Why?” Kageyama asked, directed at Kenma. “Bokuto didn’t ask you to.”

“If we waited to do everything until Bokuto gave the order, nothing would ever get done,” Kenma pointed out. Kageyama’s face flickered with a small twinge of defeat since he couldn’t exactly argue that point. 

“Bokuto never sends you to do jobs by yourself, though,” Kageyama pointed out, and that was true because if Bokuto needed Kenma to do something, he told Bokuto he would do it and that was that. Bokuto never ordered him to do anything because they didn’t work like that. Even now, Kenma was only here because Bokuto had told the two of them he  _ should _ come.

“Bokuto doesn’t like sending anyone to do anything. He makes suggestions.”

“And he never makes any to you.”

“Can we stop fighting please?”

“I still get work done, isn’t that what matters?” Kenma argued.

“What work? What do you do for Fukurodani?” 

“Okay we’re here!” Hinata nearly yelled as Kageyama pulled into the parking lot of the building they were sent to meet at. “Let’s go inside okay? And stop arguing! I’ll tell Bokuto on all of you!” 

“I think I’ll stay in the car,” Kenma decided with a small smile, turning to look at Kageyama. “I don’t want to get in the way. Have fun.”

Kageyama only gave him an unreadable look before stepping out of the car, Hinata following quickly behind while Kenma let out a breath. This was why he came home as little as possible when he was caught up in his work, because shit like this always happened and put him off. 

In reality, he still had no idea why Karasuno was moving in on Aoba Johsai’s borders. He could guess all he wanted, but he knew his guess would be missing important details because he didn’t have all the information he needed yet, and that was setting him off more than anything. He was missing something and because of that he knew a rug was going to get swept out from under his feet at some point. 

Karasuno had to have a reason for going to the border. Daichi could be sending his men to get used to the it since they had all basically been promoted the second he took over, he could be looking into establishing more business in areas closer to Aoba Johsai to test the waters and discuss them later at the Kawa Miru, he could be planning to start a conflict with Aoba Johsai, or his men could be looking for someone or something in that area Kenma didn’t even know about. There were too many options and too many uncertainties. 

Kenma scratched the back of his neck before bringing his hands into his lap and picking at his figures absentmindedly. He wasn’t getting anywhere sitting in the back of this car, and even if he wanted to leave for a few minutes to scope around, they were near Chiba’s border right now, not Saitama’s. He would just have to go back to Bokuto with what little he knew and start again tomorrow, because if Karasuno was testing Aoba Johsai’s borders it was only a matter of time before they started getting close to Chiba, and unless Kenma knew without a doubt exactly why they would be doing that, he wouldn’t be comfortable with it. Tokyo was free game with no borders or territories, but there were common ground rules and going against those was a red flag in Kenma’s book.

Kenma looked up to the window just to give himself something to look at other than his hands, but what he saw was a very familiar face leaning against the wall talking to two men, one of which he recognized, one of which was familiar but the uncertainty of who they were made Kenma uneasy. 

Saitama and Chiba shared a border, so Aoba Johsai getting close to them was normal, and yet Kenma still wanted to know why the hell Oikawa Tooru was in this part of Tokyo just leaning against a wall like he was waiting for something. 

Kenma stepped out of the car instantly, turning all three sets of eyes on him as he closed the door behind himself. Oikawa straightened his back and gave Kenma a pretentious smile as Kenma shoved his hands in his sweater and walked forward, coming to the end of the divide between two buildings and meeting them just a few feet from where they had been standing this whole time. 

“Hey Shadow, nice to see you here. Where’s your other half?” Oikawa greeted, his chin raised with lidded eyes as he looked down on Kenma.

Kenma looked over the other two faces. Kindaichi, and someone new. Kenma knew his face, so who the hell was he? 

“Weird,” Kenma finally answered, turning to Oikawa before looking around himself. “Last time I checked I’m a human being and can go wherever I please. Tell me,  _ dog _ , where’s your master? Or does he let his pets run without a leash now?”

Kindaichi instantly looked to Oikawa like he would retaliate, like Kenma was the first person he had ever seen so confidently shut Oikawa down. Oikawa’s demeanor hardly faltered. “Only his favorites,” he answered easily with a wink. “But I was aware Bokuto kept his toys with him at all times. He must have lost you.”

Kenma huffed out at a laugh. “At least my boss cares enough to come back for me. Would Akaashi even care if you never came back home begging for treats?” 

Kindaich moved forward, with what intentions Kenma wasn’t entirely sure because being close to Bokuto meant killing him would piss Akaashi off and probably start a conflict, but Oikawa held him back regardless. 

“Oh, the Shadow has a bit of a bite today!” Oikawa pointed out, biting his teeth together as if to demonstrate.

“And you have no business being here,” Kenma stated, bringing the conversation around to his topic of interest.

“It’s Tokyo, I have every right to be here,” Oikawa pointed out. 

“Well then you wouldn’t mind telling me what you’re doing so close to Chiba.”

“No problem,” Oikawa relented, but the smirk on his face told Kenma he wouldn’t be tricked into giving away anything he didn’t want to. “We’re doing business here with an arms deal since a situation arose and the clients couldn’t come meet us further into Tokyo as agreed upon.”

That wasn’t a lie, but it wasn’t the entire truth either. Why would Oikawa need two other guys with him unless the buyer was working for one of the Aoba Johsai factions and it was a trap? It was almost too easy to figure out everything he wanted despite whether Oikawa was willing to give it to him or not. 

“How many men will be there?” Kenma asked.

“Why do you need to know?” 

“I’m just wondering if you’ll be outnumbered when they turn on you, but you’re already expecting that so I’m sure you’ll be prepared,” Kenma commented with a shrug. Oikawa dropped his smile and just resorted to glaring at Kenma. 

The two men around Oikawa looked down at Kenma hesitantly, like they didn’t expect him to so easily get on Oikawa’s nerves, but they probably didn’t know how many times he and Oikawa had crossed paths before. Kenma had a habit of always being where he wasn’t supposed to be, and unfortunately so did Oikawa. They met in the streets, at deals, in places they weren’t supposed to be in, and from across the room when Akaashi and Bokuto often met. And, of course, they just loved fucking with each other’s syndicates, so there was always time to play with each other then as well. This was normal for the two of them. And because of that, despite having no evidence, it was very obvious Oikawa knew who he really was. Kenma could only assume the respect between them despite their insults and slander went so deep Oikawa had no plans on telling anyone since he hadn’t already, just as Kenma had never told Bokuto that Oikawa knew about him.

While Oikawa struggled for a comeback, Kenma let his eyes flicker to the third member of Oikawa’s party. His hair was atrocious. It was pitch black and stuck up in literally every possible direction, like he had never heard of a hairbrush before. He was tall and well built and his eyes were dark and familiar. “Who’s the new one?” Kenma asked, looking him over.

Kindaichi scoffed. “Don’t act like you know us.”

Kenma shrugged. “I wasn’t acting.” And then, with a smirk, “You don’t think I just do Bokuto’s bidding do you? I see your files  _ all _ the time. By the way, Kindaichi, you need a new driver’s license picture because that one is just… yikes.”

“This is Shiro,” Oikawa introduced, cutting Kindaichi off before he could bite back, but turning to face him afterwards. “But really, The Shadow is right Kindaichi, why do you always look so dead inside?!”

Shiro. That wasn’t right. No, Kenma didn’t know his name, but he did know the face and the terrible hair. Shiro? Bullshit. He was The Black Sheep of Karasuno, their most secretive brother and their best trained assassin and spy. Kenma had only seen him once, and he was sure The Sheep had seen him at that time. It had been years ago, before Daichi was in power, but he knew his face. He had studied it well, even when the only parts of him he could see were his eyes and the outline of his hair over his forehead. He never forgot a face he met in the yakuza, and The Sheep’s was hard to forget. 

But this just confirmed everything Kenma had been looking for. If The Sheep was with Aoba Johsai, it couldn’t have been because he just switched loyalties out of the blue. Just two months ago that bastard had fucked up a job Bokuto had been working on in Tokyo by taking someone out they needed alive, and it was very well known that it was The Black Sheep who had done it. 

The Sheep was undercover at Aoba Johsai and Karasuno was closing in on their borders. Karasuno was going to start a war with Aoba Johsai. 

A door opened some distance behind Kenma and instantly he heard a squeak of surprise before pounding feet ran over to join the little meet and greet they had going on. Oikawa smirked at Kenma. “Your babysitters are here.”

“Kenma! What are you doing?!” Hinata yelled as he came up to his side and glared at the three men that literally towered over the two of them. “What are you doing to him?!”

“Shoyo, I’m fine,” Kenma mumbled, patting his shoulder as a signal that he should calm down. 

“What are you doing here, Oikawa?” 

Oikawa’s face literally lit up at the sight of Kageyama. “Tobio-chan!” he cheered, delighted, with hands in the hair as a greeting. 

Hinata spun around to gape at Kageyama. “You know him?!” 

“Of course they know each other,” Kenma hissed, because really this should have just been obvious to anyone. “Kageyama is Bokuto’s second in command and he meets with Akaashi all the time, of course they’ve met.”

“Aw, the little Shadow is so cute when he acts all smart!” Oikawa continued with a sickening smile. 

Kenma would have loved to out The Black Sheep right then and there to see the look on Oikawa’s face when he realized, but he had other plans, and those involved in keeping this card up his sleeve and not ruining the situation. So instead…

“Oh, I did have one more thing to say to you, actually.” Kenma took a step forward so he was nearly in Oikawa’s space, looking up at him with a devilish smile that matched his own. Playing this card disgusted him, but it worked wonderfully against Oikawa who was too concerned with his image to let anyone get away with something like this. “Next time you come by the whore house, I expect you to pay me the full price.”

Oikawa’s face lit up in red from the statement, which was complete bullshit and nothing else, but Kindaichi went pale beside him and The Sheep looked like he wanted to burst out laughing as Kenma winked at him and turned to walk back towards the car, both Kageyama and Hinata pausing a moment before following behind him silently. 

Nobody could get away with saying something like that to Oikawa. Nobody but Kenma, apparently, because really, if Oikawa called his bluff would Kindaichi and  _ Shiro _ even really believe him? Absolutely not. 

Kenma got in the car first, Hinata and Kageyama rushing in afterwards while Kageyama turned the car on and pulled away without hesitation. Hinata spun around in his seat to face Kenma. 

“Why would you say something like that to him of all people?! Are you crazy?! He could have killed you!” 

Kenma shrugged, picking at his fingers again as he started going through everything in his head. “But he wouldn’t have.”

***

“Kenma, can’t this wait until after dinner?”

“No! It can’t!” Kenma declared loudly, blocking Bokuto’s way to the door to get out of his room. “Sit down and listen to me!”

“I know, I know,” Bokuto insisted. “You said Karasuno is getting close to Aoba Johsai’s borders and it’s making you nervous. But I’m hungry, I know you haven’t eaten today as usual, and so maybe-”

“You’re not listening to me!” Kenma interrupted.

“I heard what you said.” 

“But I’m telling you it’s bigger than that and you’re not listening to me! When have I ever been wrong?!” Kenma moved over to Bokuto and pushed him back by the chest so he would hopefully get the hint and stop thinking about how the lack of eating was probably making him irrational, because if not eating did anything to Kenma he would have been useless all these years. “Karasuno is going to start a conflict with Aoba Johsai, possibly a war.”

“Then that’s their business,” Bokuto said for the second time now since Kenma had told him. “Fukurodani stays out of their conflicts, remember? We always have.”

“Yes, I know we always have,” Kenma stated while Bokuto tried to move around him, but Kenma just pushed himself in front of him again, placing his hand on the door knob before Bokuto could get to it and holding it shut with his body. “But Daichi and Akaashi aren’t their predecessors, and this isn’t just a regular conflict they usually have.”

“And how can you be so sure of that?” Bokuto asked. Kenma regretted not telling him about The Black Sheep now, because that probably would have helped boost his argument tremendously, but Bokuto didn’t exactly know that three years back Kenma had gone off the radar and interfered with the two previous kumichos of Aoba Johsai and Karasuno trying to start a conflict with each other, where he saw The Black Sheep for the first time. Kenma had only been there to stop the conflict from spreading to a point where it would have to involve Fukurodani, but Bokuto  _ really _ didn’t need to know that. So in theory, Kenma couldn’t say he saw The Black Sheep with Oikawa because  _ in theory _ he shouldn’t know what The Black Sheep looked like. 

“I’ve been watching them for the past week,” Kenma argued instead. “I’ve been following them and getting information out of them. No, none of them have looked me in the eyes and told me ‘Karasuno is going to start a war with Aoba Johsai’ but have I ever been wrong about something like this before?”

Bokuto sighed, taking a step back from the door. “No,” he admitted. “You haven’t.” 

“So why aren’t you listening to me?”

“I am listening to you,” Bokuto said with a calm voice. “But Kenma, you’re telling me all of this like you want me to do something about it. But I’m not going to get Fukurodani involved in any conflicts between the other two syndicates. We stay neutral, remember?

“I’m not telling you to get involved, I don’t want you to get involved,” Kenma clarified sternly. “I want you to be prepared.”

“How exactly?”

“Wha- what?”

“How should we prepare?”

“You could start by accepting that Karasuno is probably either going to attack us as well or will try to hold a meeting to bribe us to their side, and no doubt something will happen at the Kawa Miru so you also need to be ready for that. Listening to me and believing me when I say something is going to happen would also be a tremendous start. Making a few excuses to the others so I can go do more research on this-”

“No.”

“Bokuto-”

“I don’t want you getting involved, Kenma,” Bokuto told him, grabbing him by the shoulders and leaning down to get more on his level. “We’re not going to get involved.”

“I’m not trying to get involved, I’m trying to be ready so we’re not caught off guard when something happens,” Kenma pointed out, anger boiling in every part of his body that Bokuto was just now, of all times, giving him an order. 

“And by doing that you could accidentally get involved! I want you to stay in Chiba.”

“Absolutely not!” Kenma denied, pushing Bokuto away. “I’m trying-”

“I know, Kenma I know,” Bokuto assured him with a sad smile. “But you’re more important to me than all of the yakuza combined, you know that right? You’re my best friend. If you think something is going to happen, I trust you. But that’s all the more reason that I don’t want you to be putting yourself in danger.”

“I can handle myself.”

“I know you can, but can we start with you eating dinner and then we can talk about finding other things for you to do so you don’t get antsy? Just… anything but this. Please Kenma.”

Kenma looked down at the floor in front of him, still bubbling with rage. If they didn’t start looking into the conflict now, something was going to happen and Bokuto would be left to deal with the consequences. If he didn’t do anything now, Bokuto was going to have to pay the price. He couldn’t let that happen to him. It was his  _ job _ to make sure that didn’t happen to him.

“Okay,” he agreed while Bokuto pulled him in for an excited hug before releasing him and practically dragging him out of his office to get food. Kenma agreed, but he lied. If Bokuto wasn’t going to let him do this, he would just have to go through the extra effort of making sure Bokuto didn’t know he was going to do it anyways.


	3. Chapter Three

**Part One: Kuroo**

* * *

“I can cook dinner tonight.”

It wasn’t what Kuroo had intended to say, but the words had already left his mouth so it made sense that he would commit himself to that rash decision. It was going to be the first night almost everyone would be back at the Aoba Johsai house without something keeping them busy, and Oikawa had gone on and on about making Hanamaki and Matsukawa liven up their meals for once to make it special, so Kuroo had offered to cook instead. 

Oikawa had waved him off at first because it was weird that a hitman would have any idea how to cook a decent meal, but Kuroo just assured him he was actually good at cooking. Akaashi had come back to the house early and Oikawa hadn’t wasted a second before running up to him and laughing about how Kuroo had offered to cook. Kuroo was sure he had gone red in the face out of embarrassment, but Akaashi had just looked at him and agreed. Oikawa had been dumbfounded, as had Kuroo since he hadn’t been expecting Akaashi to actually agree to that, but the man just told him Hanamaki and Matsukawa were at his disposal, as was the entire kitchen. Oikawa then proceeded to sulk about it for the next hour.

It was almost weird seeing Oikawa act like that, but then again no it wasn’t because it wasn’t too far off from how he acted to anyone else, just without the overdramatic pouting. 

Kuroo kept telling himself he shouldn’t be cooking for Aoba Johsai as he stirred the noodles and checked the heat on the vegetables in the two pans on the next burners over. It wasn’t right that he would cook for Aoba Johsai and yet he had only ever offered to cook for Karasuno once in his entire life. Then again, the one time he did offer he had been shoved aside and told he would probably poison Daichi’s food. It hadn’t been a joke when they said that to him, and his brothers assuming he would poison Daichi had hurt more than anyone had probably expected it to. 

They didn’t insult him like that here. The day Kuroo had been sworn into Aoba Johsai he had been welcomed to sit at the dining table. He had been included in conversations, even on things he had absolutely no idea about. Whenever he had to ask questions, not because he was prying for information but just because he wanted to understand something, they all seemed more than happy to explain it to him. They didn’t chastise him for not understanding things and they didn’t insult him for anything, aside from Oikawa, of course, but it seemed the whole family had gotten used to seeing Kuroo throw insults right back at him. 

It was strange to say that out of everyone in Aoba Johsai, over the three weeks he had been with them now, he was probably closest to Oikawa. The man always sat by him at the diner table, ranted to him about absolutely everything, and took him with him half of the time when he had things to do without Akaashi.

Tsukishima seemed to dislike Kuroo, but he also seemed to dislike Oikawa so he just kind of figured Tsukishima hated everyone but Yamaguchi, who he was pretty sure was scared of him to some extent. Yamaguchi stuck to Tsukishima’s side like glue, but sometimes he would go off with Akaashi alone. He never stayed in a room with Oikawa and himself for long, and the fact that Kuroo was associated with Oikawa so much was starting to piss him off, but it just seemed to brighten Oikawa’s day. 

Matsukawa and Hanamaki were always nice to him and had told him more about Aoba Johsai than he could have realistically ever hoped to know. He felt guilty taking in everything they told him, memorizing their organization systems and the routes they used to traffic weapons, but that was what he was here to do. Sometimes he had to remind himself of that.

Yahaba was always nice. He stuck around Hanamaki and Matsukawa the most, but it seemed he was just as used to Oikawa as Kuroo was becoming with how much he threw half-assed insults back at him. Yahaba always just kind of floated around the house and between different jobs, but he seemed reliable.

Kindaichi was nice enough to Kuroo that they got along fine, and there was one guy named Kunimi that he had spoken maybe two words to, but he also rarely saw him.

Then there was Akaashi: the kumicho of Aoba Johsai and the man Daichi intended to go to war with. The first time he had met the man, Oikawa had dragged him in front of the him, still dressed in a suit and tie, and told him he wanted to take Kuroo under his care. Kuroo had been so confused then, because if Oikawa had wanted Kuroo as one of his underlings there would have been no reason to bring him to the house when the two of them could have done the ceremony without him, but then Oikawa had asked Akaashi to take him in as well. Nobody had ever  _ asked _ Daichi to take in anyone. If Daichi took someone in it was because it was his decision, same with his father. At the time, Kuroo thought Akaashi would scold Oikawa, or maybe beret him for being so stupid, but the man took one look at Kuroo and said okay; he said he would do it if Oikawa wanted him to, and that was that. 

Akaashi wandered around the house a lot, and while Daichi always had an overwhelming presence sometimes Kuroo nearly missed Akaashi’s entrance. It was to a fault that Akaashi didn’t carry that presence, because perhaps if he did half of his clan wouldn’t have broken off, but Kuroo felt himself quite drawn to him. He always made sure Kuroo was comfortable going out on jobs with everyone before sending him anywhere and he had checked up on him quite a few times now to see how he was adjusting. 

Kuroo couldn’t name five times in the past two months anyone in Karasuno besides Iwaizumi had been kind enough to include him in anything, and yet these guys did it with so much ease. He felt bad for feeling indebted to them, like he should cook them a meal to show them how grateful he was to not be shoved aside for once, but he found himself finding less and less reasons to to think he should feel anything less. 

He knew Iwaizumi would probably kick his ass. Not only had his mission practically been ruined since he was definitely not where he was supposed to be, but now he was so deep in Saitama he wouldn’t be able to get out on his own even if he wanted to, not to mention he was always paired with someone whenever they went out into Tokyo. If he did want to leave, he would have to out himself as a member of Karasuno which would fuck over Daichi’s position, but perhaps that might have been a good thing. And then there was the fact that Kuroo had spent several nights just thinking about how long he would stay, more along the lines of how long could he stay until he  _ had _ to go back?

If he stayed with Aoba Johsai, which he was still trying to convince himself he wasn’t actually thinking about doing, Karasuno would come for him and kill him on sight which was more than likely considering they knew most of his habits. If Kuroo outed himself to Aoba Johsai and explained the situation, they would probably kill him. Maybe they wouldn’t, but Kuroo wasn’t that confident in their kindness yet. And if Kuroo left to go back to Karasuno and Aoba Johsai ever found out, it would be Aoba Johsai that would be out to kill him on sight. 

No matter what, his situation really didn’t look good and he was having a very hard time trying to decide what to do.

Aside from that, he wanted to kick himself for thinking he could ever abandon Iwaizumi—the one person who had ever really given a shit about him and continued to do so consistently.  _ But he’ll understand if you weren’t happy at Karasuno _ , his mind would continue to tell him.  _ No, he’d hate you for leaving him. He’d say you’re a traitor _ , and Kuroo couldn’t argue with that logic.  _ But what will Oikawa think? Aren’t you his friend now, too? _ Well, Oikawa was hardly comparable to Iwaizumi, but the fact remained that Oikawa had seemed to actually take a liking to Kuroo and he neither wanted to be on the other end of his hatred or betray him like he knew he would probably have to anyways.

Kuroo really had no idea what he was going to do, so instead of working through that he was going to cook a meal big enough for the entire house. For the Aoba Johsai house. Not just  _ the _ house because that would imply- oh nevermind. 

He immersed himself in the art of cooking—the one thing he was apparently good at besides killing. The smells of the vegetables frying in their pans and the sounds of the water boiling in the pot surrounded him. He didn’t even need ambiance music to keep him focused, he just needed the atmosphere of the kitchen to drag him into his work. An apron was hooked around his neck, sleeves rolled up to his elbows, and if he caught himself off guard he might have even noticed a genuine smile displayed on his lips. 

When the food was ready and plated on trays, Kuroo took one tray in each of his hands and nudged the door open with his back.

“Oh shit! Shiro, let me help you!” Hanamaki yelled instantly, waiting until Kuroo had passed him to dash into the kitchen to grab another tray or two. Matsukawa yelled something to the other members about food being ready as Yahaba finished setting the table.

For a second Kuroo thought about Yaku and Lev, always bickering with each other while they set the table for the food he never ate, and yet every time he looked over Yaku always had a place set for him. But this wasn’t Karasuno, this was Aoba Johsai; Yahaba was setting the table, not Yaku and Lev.

Akaashi came out just as Kuroo and Hanamaki finished carrying the last of the food out to the table. He nodded gratefully to Hanamaki while the boy gave him a smile and rushed by him to take his seat by Matsukawa. When Kuroo was done, he looked up at Akaashi to see him beckoning him over with his head. If Daichi did that, Kuroo might have thought he did something wrong, so when he walked over with that expectation in the back of his mind he was shocked when Akaashi pulled out the seat beside his for Kuroo to take. 

Kuroo had never been invited to sit next to Daichi.

Nobody blinked when he took the seat either. They didn’t glare at him out of jealousy or give him looks like he would try to hurt Akaashi. He was just genuinely welcome to be there right by Akaashi’s side, and nobody cared.

Kuroo wanted to stay. He didn’t want to leave everyone here just to return to Karasuno when the only person he really gave a shit about there was Iwaizumi. 

But staying wasn’t possible for him.

If any of these guys found out his real identity they would despise him just as much as everyone at Karasuno did. They were good people, but the problem lied with Kuroo himself, and eventually someone was going to figure out who he was. 

He had to go back to Karasuno and play his part as Daichi’s soldier no matter how comforted he felt by the idea of finally belonging somewhere, because the simple truth was he didn’t. He didn’t belong anywhere. 

Kuroo’s attention was dragged back to the present moment when Akaashi made a sound to get his attention. He looked over expectantly to see Akaashi just watching him, and for a moment Kuroo had nothing to say and instead just looked back at him, waiting for him to say something instead. 

Finally, Akaashi nodded at the food. “This is far better than I expected, Shiro. Your cooking skills are outstanding. Do you enjoy it?”

Kuroo nodded quickly. “Thanks, I’m glad you like it. I’ve loved cooking since I was young.”

Akaashi nodded. “If you would like, you can work with Hanamaki and Matsukawa in the kitchen whenever you’d like.”

Nothing in the world had ever sounded nicer, but he couldn’t. He couldn’t stay. He  _ had _ to go back to Karasuno.

“Thank you, I’d be happy to,” Kuroo agreed with a nod of his head and as fake a smile as he could manage. Akaashi looked at him for a moment later, like he was trying to read through him, but after a moment he just looked back down at his food and Kuroo did the same.

“Shiro, how would you like to go out into Tokyo with me after dinner? Just the two of us?”

Akaashi didn’t seem mad at him, but then again Akaashi was known for never smiling so it was hard to read his emotions at all. Instead of voicing an agreement, Kuroo simply nodded. It would have been rude to refuse the kumicho. He couldn’t deny that the idea of going out alone with just Akaashi did worry him though considering he had never been alone with him before and despite how kind and welcoming he appeared, Kuroo didn’t want to test that.

But going out now in general made Kuroo nervous, ever since one week ago when they had met Kenma. 

Sure, everyone knew who Kenma was. He was Bokuto’s Shadow. He was the mystery of Fukurodani. That was all a show, though. Kuroo knew he was much more than just a pet on a leash behind the scenes because he had met Kenma before. They hadn’t spoken to each other, acknowledged each other, or even locked eyes with each other, but Kuroo had seen Kenma at that time and now he was sure that Kenma had most definitely seen him. Three years ago that had happened, and yet it was obvious in the way Kenma avoided looking at him for too long that he was trying to pretend like he didn’t recognize him. 

It was bound to happen. Parading around with Aoba Johsai he was bound to run into one of the few people that could recognize him without his signature face mask, but the fact that that person was Kenma made everything so much worse. Kuroo didn’t know Kenma. He knew about him, but it was obvious everything public about him was a cover.

After all, if Fukurodani prided themselves on staying out of conflict so much, why had Kenma been the reason Aoba Johsai and Karasuno didn’t go to war with each other three years ago?

That unpredictability made him dangerous, and Kuroo wished he had run into literally anyone else except him. Did Kenma tell Bokuto about him? Was Kenma going to tell Akaashi, or maybe someone else in Aoba Johsai? Those thoughts plagued his mind every time he went out with anyone now, paranoia sinking under his skin as he wondered what move Kenma was going to make to fuck him over. Kuroo rarely got paranoid like that, but Kenma being such an unknown factor wasn’t helping any part of his situation. 

***

Akaashi, unlike Daichi, did not prefer to drive himself apparently. Daichi refused to let anyone else but Suga drive him anywhere, so Kuroo almost slipped up and let his shock show when Akaashi kindly instructed his private driver, dressed in a suit with slicked back hair, to bring them to Tokyo. Kuroo wanted to know where they were going, but Akaashi kept his voice quiet as they departed so he must not have wanted him to know. 

They didn’t say a word the whole ride and Kuroo wondered whether it was because Akaashi was naturally quiet or because he didn’t trust his private driver to that extent. Either way, the silence they sat in was comfortable enough so Kuroo paid it little attention. 

The driver dropped them off by a park with a road lit by street lamps. It was a beautiful spot on the outskirts of the city and lots of people were talking walks together and holding up their phones for pictures.

Kuroo turned to Akaashi to ask what they were doing here of all places, but Akaashi spoke first. 

“Who were you with before you came to Aoba Johsai?”

Kuroo knew his dread should have been sinking in his stomach at that comment, but the way Akaashi asked was almost like he already knew the answer and wasn’t angry about it, and somehow Kuroo felt himself not panicking as much as he expected to.

“Nobody. I worked as a mercenary hitman off the streets.”

“Hitmen are always affiliated with gangs,” Akaashi pointed out, folding his hands behind his back and starting to walk as a leisurely pace while Kuroo kept up with him. “If you’re a hitman in this area, gangs will take you under their wing, and most gangs are affiliated with the yakuza around here. The only way you would be a hitman with no affiliation was if you were from outside Tokyo, Saitama, Kanagawa, and Chiba.”

That was when Kuroo’s blood ran cold in his veins because Akaashi was right. When Kuroo had been a hitman for hire when he was younger, before getting involved with Karasuno, he hadn’t been with any gangs. But Kuroo grew up in Yamanashi. He told Oikawa he was a hitman in Saitama.

“Are you not answering because you’re scared of telling me where you really came from?” Akaashi asked when Kuroo had stayed silent for a few seconds too long trying to rack his brain for anything to get him out of this situation. He knew he had to leave and go back to Karasuno and that exposing who he really was was probably the only way to do that, but he didn’t want it to happen like this. He wasn’t ready yet. He wasn’t ready to go back. 

Kuroo dipped his head. “I’m sorry,” was all he said, and Akaashi let out an empty sigh as they continued walking. 

“For what?”

“For-” Kuroo began, but his voice clogged up in his throat.  _ I’m sorry for making you think I could be one of you? I’m sorry for crossing prefecture lines as a member of Karasuno and coming into your home as an imposter? I’m sorry because I’m going to be the reason you and the rest of your house is going to suffer in a war you’re not prepared for nor do I think you could ever deserve? _ “For lying.”

“Do you like it with us, Shiro? At Aoba Johsai?” Akaashi asked in a calm voice, and Kuroo struggled to keep himself composed under the pressure of voicing any of his recent thoughts. 

“I do,” he mumbled, scanning the area instinctively for anyone he would recognize as if just saying those words was enough to get him shot on sight. When he let his eyes flicker over to Akaashi, he found the man already looking at him and realized Akaashi must have picked up on that. 

“But you’re conflicted,” Akaashi pointed out. Kuroo really didn’t want to admit that out loud either, especially to Akaashi. He opened his mouth to deny it, but Akaashi spoke over him again. “I understand you want to keep who you used to be to yourself. I know many people who come to the yakuza specifically to forget their old lives. I’m simply asking you not to lie to me right now. Are you conflicted, Shiro?”

Kuroo let his head dip as he watched his feet. “I do like Aoba Johsai,” he began, his voice small. He had to find an excuse. Akaashi could already tell he was feeling nervous, but he couldn’t just tell him he was from a rival syndicate. He had to make something up. Anything. He just had to give Akaashi a bullshit excuse simple enough for him to believe. “But... it’s hard to let go of an entire past in three weeks,” he decided slowly, which wasn’t exactly wrong but it would work temporarily.

Akaashi nodded in understanding. “We all have pasts that are hard to come to terms with in the yakuza. What I care about is if you are willing to leave that behind for Aoba Johsai.”

“You don’t-” Kuroo began, brows furrowing as he stopped walking, forcing Akaashi to stop to wait for his response which was outright rude, but he seemed unbothered. “You don’t care where I came from?”

“Should I?” Akaashi asked, tilting his head. “Like I said, we all have difficult pasts. Most of us became involved in gangs and the yakuza since we were children so it’s hard to blame people for where they come from. I don’t care about that. I want to know if you’re going to stick with Aoba Johsai. You’re your own person now and you can make your own decisions. I want to know what your decision is.”

Kuroo blinked at Akaashi, having nothing else to say. He looked him over for any sign that he was lying, but the man just remained the same genuine person he had been the entire time Kuroo had known him. 

If Kuroo did tell him the truth, would he hate him? He had already figured out Kuroo lied and yet he hadn’t seemed upset or angry. He had talked to Kuroo about it and come to an agreement with him. Daichi had never done that. Karasuno had never done that. Kuroo was always the bad guy just for existing, but Akaashi was accepting him as he was right now and yet he didn’t even  _ know _ who he was. How could he just leave him and Aoba Johsai after that?

“Even if I was Yakuza?” Kuroo asked hypothetically, though Akaashi could probably already tell it was much deeper than that. 

Akaashi shifted on his feet as if he had just been standing in one position for too long and the question hardly bothered him. “If you were yakuza before coming here I’d want to know,” he said slowly. Kuroo almost felt his heart drop in his chest for a reason he couldn’t quite explain before Akaashi spoke again. “Only because it’s hard to protect you if another syndicate would be angry with you for leaving. But again, Shiro, we all have our own pasts. I’ll never blame you for a past you most likely had hardly any control over, I’m going to judge you based on the decisions you make as someone who is given a choice. So Shiro, what is your decision?”

His heart was beating rapidly in his chest while Akaashi watched his every move, and the fact that he knew his panic was showing through his crafted facade was even more nerve wracking. 

His decision? He was supposed to make a decision right now?! He would have to say Aoba Johsai. He had to. He couldn’t just leave now after saying all of that, Akaashi would have him killed… right? After all, Akaashi had said he had a choice. Daichi gave Kuroo ‘choices’ all the time but his hand was always forced, so if he knew what being forced to make a certain choice felt like why didn’t he feel like he was being forced when anything else would have been ridiculous?! 

He had to say he would stay with Aoba Johsai, but then he would go back to Karasuno. But did Karasuno even want him? Iwaizumi wanted him, surely. Him and Iwaizumi had been friends since they were teenagers, but Iwaizumi’s life would be easier without him right? He wouldn’t get dirty looks from the rest of his brothers just for choosing Kuroo over the rest of them and he wouldn’t be looked down on for always going along with him. He would have a chance to be a real executive without Kuroo there to drag him down. 

But could Kuroo really stay here? Akaashi was telling him it didn’t matter where he came from, that even if he was from Karasuno he would be willing to protect him. Would everyone else protect him, too? What would Daichi do when he found out?! Would Daichi come to kill him? But if Kuroo said yes to Akaashi now and then still went back to Karasuno he would be killed anyways, right? 

What if staying at Aoba Johsai was a real possibility? What if staying with Aoba Johsai wasn’t out of the question? What if… just like how Kenma stopped a war from happening three years ago, what if Kuroo could keep dozens of people from dying by giving Akaashi enough information to help him? What if there didn’t have to be a war and he didn’t have to go back? 

What if he could belong here? 

“Shiro-”

“I’m from Karasuno.”

Akaashi’s eyes widened at Kuroo’s confession, but Kuroo could hardly tell from the way his heart was hammering in his chest. He hadn’t meant to just blurt that out. Akaashi had just caught him off guard and he had been thinking about telling him, but he couldn’t even bring himself to regret saying those words. 

“You’re-”

“I was sent into Saitama because Daichi is gathering information to start a war with Aoba Johsai, but I want to stay,” Kuroo continued to blurt out, rambling at this point while Akaashi just stood there with his lips parted in silence. “I don’t- I don’t want to go back. I never even intended for any of this to happen, I was supposed to go back weeks ago but I’ve just been giving myself every reason why I shouldn’t leave yet. But- but Akaashi I don’t- I’m sorry. I’m sorry for lying, my name isn’t even Shiro. I’m-” He paused with the title on the tip of his tongue—not even his name, just what everyone knew him as. The nickname burned in his throat as he felt himself being overwhelmed by everything he was saying now, and he realized he didn’t want to call himself that. He didn’t want to be The Black Sheep of Karasuno anymore. 

“Do you want me to still call you Shiro?” Akaashi asked with that same monotone voice that made it seem like he had never been bothered by anything. Kuroo just looked up at him and gaped.

“It’s not my name, though.”

“But you clearly don’t like your old one. If you’re going to stay with us, why do you need to use the same name? You can call yourself whatever you’d like,” Akaashi told him in a soft voice, and being suddenly presented the choice, Kuroo felt himself incapable of deciding whether or not he wanted to abandon his own name. Only a few people knew his real name anyways, but they called it with such disdain. Would Aoba Johsai do that to him? Kuroo jumped back from his thoughts with the light touch of Akaashi’s hand on his shoulder. “That’s not a decision you have to make right now,” he said calmly with an expression that was so neutral yet somehow radiated more calmness and ease than a smile ever could. Kuroo nodded and let out a breath he couldn’t remember holding. “However, I hope you would understand if I wanted to ask you a few questions about you coming to Saitama.”

Kuroo nodded and turned to Akaashi with a strong front. “I don’t want him to start a war with you. I never agreed to it and he didn’t listen to me. I’ll tell you whatever I know.”

Akaashi nodded and let his hand drop from Kuroo’s shoulder. “I appreciate that. And I want you to know that I do want to make you comfortable here at Aoba Johsai. It’s a bit of a mess now, but I’ll do my best.”

Kuroo nodded and licked his lips. His best? Would it be rude if he just… “It’s the way you look at them.”

Akaashi quirked his eyebrow at him. “I’m sorry?”

“I’ve wanted to point that out ever since I’ve come here,” Kuroo admitted with a gasp of breath. “You don’t smile, that’s a well known part of your reputation, but you’re still very kind and it shows to the other syndicates. I know you’re a kind person, but I wanted to say I think it would help to reaffirm to the factions that you’re capable of leading if you showed them you’re willing to do what needs to be done.”

Akaashi nodded, taking in every single one of Kuroo’s words in a way nobody but Iwaizumi ever had. Even Daichi had never taken his advice so seriously. 

“If you came here under Daichi’s direct orders you must have been part of the immediate family,” Akaashi noted thoughtfully. Kuroo barely got a chance to hold his breath before the man was speaking again. “That’s some good advice. I wasn’t expecting that, but I guess I’m not used to you not pretending not to know everything now,” he commented, Kuroo shrinking a bit with a nervous laugh as Akaashi literally pointed out that he had been lying about everything for weeks now. “What else?”

Kuroo furrowed his brows. “You want me to give you more advice?”

Akaashi just blinked at him for a moment. “Yes. I think you have a strong point about how I present myself, and if you’ve thought about it in depth I would assume you have specific ways I can improve it. I’d like to hear them.”

“You trust me that easily?”

“You made your decision, so yes.”

“And you care about my advice?”

“Did Daichi not?” Akaashi countered, but Kuroo just went silent. Akaashi sighed, shaking his head slightly. “That’s rather sad considering you’re clearly quite observant. I’d like to hear a lot of what you have to say. You must have information about Daichi’s plans, yes, but you also spent time around the factions. You must have a great deal of advice for me, and I’d like to listen to all of it.”

Kuroo felt a smile growing on his lips as he nodded his head quickly. Yes, he was betraying Daichi by doing this, but when had Daichi ever made him feel like he had any worth at all? Akaashi had validated him more in a few minutes than Daichi had the entire time he had known him. 

Akaashi parted his lips to say something else, but a chime from his phone interrupted him. “Excuse me,” he said politely, and Kuroo nodded his head wondering why Akaashi felt the need to excuse himself, as if it wasn’t a given that he would be excused. Daichi didn’t. No other kumicho Kuroo had ever met had done that. 

Akaashi merely glanced at his screen before shoving the device back in his pocket and looking back up at Kuroo. “Shall we save our conversation for later tonight? I have someone to meet with apparently.”

Kuroo nodded and Akaashi gestured with his chin for Kuroo to follow him. He settled into a pace slightly behind Akaashi’s left side but after only a second of walking Akaashi stopped and turned around to face him.

“Did you ever go to meetings with Daichi?” he asked suddenly.

“Only to certain confidential meetings, never bigger events,” Kuroo confessed easily, and it felt like a weight off his chest being able to say that instead of lying. He just neglected to mention he had been there behind a mask and with a gun always pointed at someone’s head.

“Well Daichi may have done things his way, and I can tell you’ve been trained to do things like that, but I feel guilty if you’re walking behind me like a servant. We’re not meeting anyone of any important status so you should walk by my side. I’m not any better than you just because of my title, you’re my equal.” 

Kuroo parted his lips in disbelief for a moment before nodding and moving up to Akaashi’s side. Anytime he had gone anywhere with Daichi he had been trained to be respectful and let Daichi lead. But… 

“If I may say something…” Kuroo started, wincing at himself for having the audacity to speak up again.

“You may say whatever you want to,” Akaashi replied immediately, causing Kuroo to let out another breath of relief.

“I think when going to any meetings with people who are not in your immediate house you should be the center of attention. It makes you look stronger,” Kuroo suggested, feeling a pit of nervousness settle in his stomach at the possibility that Akaashi had lied earlier and had only said he cared about his advice to calm him down when in reality he had no interest in anything he had to say.

“Well, we  _ are _ actually meeting someone from the main house,” Akaashi informed him kindly, “but back to what you said; would Oikawa and Tsukishima not feel offended if I made them walk a few steps behind me?”

“I don’t think so,” Kuroo said, reminding himself to keep pace with Akaashi. “If only for entering meetings and events, I think they would understand as long as you explained your thoughts to them. They respect you, so if you say you want to try something new I think they would have no problem with it.”

Akaashi nodded thoughtfully, clearly turning over the idea in his head like it was important to him before dragging his attention back to what was in front of him. He looked up at the one rather large man heading towards them with a black expression and hands shoved in his pockets with a simple nod of acknowledgement. Kuroo knew him, though he had originally expected to be long gone from Aoba Johsai before ever having to meet him.

“Ushijima,” Akaashi greeted with a bow of his head as they met towards the side of the road. Ushijima bowed his head in return. “Where’s Tendou? I wasn’t expecting you back for three more days.”

“Tendou has decided Yamanashi is too boring for him, so we’ve come home early,” Ushijima spoke with a brooding voice that almost knocked Kuroo over in shock. How could a man’s voice go that deep while Kuroo sounded like a whining cat?

“You could have come back sooner if you wanted. The business in Yamanashi wasn’t urgent,” Akaashi assured him.

“I felt it was in our best interests to leave the prefecture for a few weeks. I hope you’ve been handling the situation alright.”

“It’s not easy,” Akaashi admitted with a shrug. “But perhaps it will be much easier now with you back to help.”

Ushijima nodded, turning to face Kuroo. “You must be new to the family,” he spoke, bowing his head in respect. “I am sorry I missed your arrival.”

Kuroo nodded, quickly bowing his head back in respect. “I’m Shiro,” he introduced without hesitation, only realizing after saying it that he had called himself Shiro. Akaashi said he could go by any name he wanted. Perhaps Shiro wasn’t such a bad name after all. “It’s a pleasure to finally meet you.”

“Shiro, you looked rather offput,” Akaashi commented, and yet despite the lack of any smile it was almost like Akaashi was teasing him. “Is Ushijima not what you expected?”

Kuroo blanched for a minute. Was that a playful bait or was he serious? He cleared his throat. “I just- I spent a few weeks with some guys from a faction. They said…” Should Kuroo even say that? Of course he would tell Akaashi everything eventually, but should he really be giving anything about himself away to Ushijima right now? Well, technically everyone knew he had been working with the factions, but it still felt weird to say it to someone who didn’t already know. 

“I am not trying to take Akaashi’s position, if that is what you have heard of me,” Ushijima spoke up. “I’m sorry you were led to presume such things.” 

“Ushijima has always been very loyal,” Akaashi commented, looking at Kuroo. “He never made any moves to take my title and he’s been working his hardest to move towards solving our dilemma. Anyone would be foolish to blame him for what other people think of him.”

Kuroo nodded quickly before turning to Ushijima and bowing. “I’m sorry for letting the rumors influence my opinion of you. It truly is wonderful to meet you in person.”

“You as well,” Ushijima replied respectfully before turning to Akaashi. “I have a car waiting if you would like a ride back to Saitama.”

“That would be wonderful,” Akaashi agreed, gesturing for Ushijima to lead the way. Kuroo fell in pace beside Akaashi again as Ushijima travelled slightly ahead of them, and Akaashi leaned in closer. “Don’t feel pressured to tell anyone if you’re not ready,” he said with a quiet voice before pulling back. “We should talk first anyways, but whether or not you want to tell everyone else is your choice.”

Kuroo’s choice. It was still such a strange thing to comprehend—that he had genuine choices beyond manipulated outcomes. He would tell them. Everyone in Aoba Johsai deserved to know, but he would wait for the right time to tell them all after him and Akaashi had finished working everything out. They deserved to know because, after all, Kuroo was really part of Aoba Johsai now. 

* * *

**Part Two: Kenma**

* * *

“I’m going to ask you one more time before I take a second finger. What is Karasuno planning against Aoba Johsai?” 

The man in front of Kenma screamed as he struggled against the restraints holding him to the chair he was bound to. He cried out for help, but the cloth gagging him was restricting the volume a bit. 

Kenma sighed in frustration. “If you don’t stop screaming I’m going to cut your finger off anyways.”

The man stopped screaming instantly in lieu of panting and forcing mangled sounds out through the cloth. Kenma reached over with one hand to pull it out of his mouth and let it hang around his neck instead and the man gasped for air as loudly as he possibly could. 

“Talk,” Kenma urged, pressing the tip of his knife against the underside of the man’s chin with a bit of pressure. “Quickly, I don’t have all day.”

The man’s lips curled in while his eyes watered. “Why are you doing this?” he begged instead of answering Kenma’s question, so Kenma yanked the cloth up and shoved it back in his mouth while the man screamed in protest before moving around to the back of the chair and grabbing his left ring finger with one hand, cutting it clean off with his knife in the other. The man let out a wail of pain, writhing in the chair, his finger bleeding out behind his back. Kenma threw the severed appendage onto the floor in front of him before crouching down to get in his view. 

“You have eight more fingers,” Kenma pointed out, raising his eyebrows up like it was a surprise. “Should I make that seven or are you going to tell me something useful?”

The man yelled out a whine while nodding his head, so Kenma yanked the cloth down again as the man gasped for breath. “We don’t know anything!” the man spat out as quickly as he could, actual spit dripping from his bloody lip. “Nobody tells us anything I swear we-”

“You,” Kenma cut him off, pressing the tip of his knife to the man’s neck again, “work with the main house. You do private jobs for them. There’s no way you’re that dumb and clueless, so,” Kenma continued, leaning in closely so he could lower his voice, “I suggest you stop lying to me before I take your trigger finger and you become  _ completely _ useless.”

The man sputtered for words while Kenma waited with waning patience for the man to form a single comprehensible sentence. “There’s- the- there’s nothing. Nothing going on. I swear.”

“You’re still lying,” Kenma pointed out with a tsk, pulling the cloth back up while the man began screaming again. He moved himself to the back of the chair again, looking over the man’s blood covered hands which were missing two fingers. “Let’s see… what about this finger?” Kenma asked out loud, pulling the man’s left pointer finger out from his attempted fist and pressing the point of his knife into the pad of it. He continued pressing as the man continued screaming until the knife split the top of his finger in half. He pulled against his restraints, screaming out in agonizing pain, while all Kenma had to do was wiggle the knife in the wound a little bit. “If you want me to stop all you have to do is tell me what I want to know,” Kenma pointed out with a sigh. “I don’t care if you live after this or not. In fact, I’d prefer you live so you can go on and tell everybody about our little playdate. So… got anything to say to me?” The man never stopped screaming as Kenma talked, but he knew every single one of his words would be heard loud and clear. 

Kenma reached around to pull the cloth down, and the man wasted no time gasping for breath. “THE KAWA MIRU!” he screamed with a gasp, tilting his head forward and panting.

Kenma dropped the knife quickly, moving himself around to the front of the chair and tilting the man’s head up to hold eye contact with him. “What about the Kawa Miru?”

“That’s where it’s going to start. They’re just waiting for their spy with Aoba Johsai to get back and then- and then they’re going to start preparing to start- to-”

“Spit it out,” Kenma demanded.

“To start a war with Aoba Johsai. At the Kawa Miru. I swear that’s all I know I- I don’t know what their exact plan is because their spy isn’t back yet. That’s all I know.”

Kenma nodded, pushing himself up to his feet and regarding the destroyed spy in front of him. He had hoped to get more information quantity wise, but this was probably more important than anything else he could have learned. 

“Thank you,” Kenma said with a roll of his eyes, reaching over for his bag to pull out a thin wire. He wrapped the ends around his hands as the man watched, and before he could say anything Kenma shoved the rag back into his mouth. “No hard feelings or anything,” Kenma said, stepping around the back of the chair, “but if I let you live, Karasuno will know I came to Kanagawa, and I just can’t let that happen. I’d give you a quick death but… that would be more blood for me to clean up. This is more convenient. Sorry.” With those last words, Kenma hooked the wires around the man’s neck and placed his foot on the bottom rung of the chair, pulling harshly as the man struggled to breath.

Kenma bleached the floor to clean the blood, shoving any rags or gloves he used in a trash bag along with the man’s teeth, nails, and all the hair he shaved off of him. He poured gasoline over the rest of the body and burnt it on his way out, and then he tossed the trash bag in a discreet pile of garbage a short way down the street and he burnt that, too. 

He had to get the information he had back to Bokuto immediately. Bokuto probably wouldn’t be happy that Kenma had ignored him, continued looking into yakuza business, went into Kanagawa, and killed a man just to get information, but Kenma really wasn’t sure how Bokuto usually assumed he got his information so if Bokuto was smart it shouldn’t have been a surprise. 

Kenma didn’t take public transportation to the border of Tokyo, rather he decided to walk with his hands shoved in his pockets and his baseball cap secured over his hair. This way he could avoid any suspicious cameras. He walked halfway before taking a turn down a street he knew had no cameras, pulling his hat into his bag and shoving his sweater inside it as well. He pulled out a small hair tie, tying his hair back and pulling a face mask over the bottom portion of his face. And just like he had walked down the street, he walked out on the other side looking like a completely different person, blending into the crowd just enough that anyone tracking a boy in a black sweater and hat would have lost sight of him. 

A few people looked in his direction, but people had a tendency to look at others when they passed them. A little girl watched him as she walked hand in hand with her mother, an old man looked at him for a fraction of a second, and a young boy watched him from the other side of the street with wide eyes and parted lips before turning around and running in the other direction. 

“Fuck,” Kenma muttered to himself before taking off across the street, ignoring any oncoming cars before racing into the alleyway the boy had disappeared down. He wasn’t there, but Kenma knew the layout of this area. If a Karasuno spy had to get anywhere, he’d go to an agreed meeting spot which would be public, meaning the boy would head to the market a few blocks down. 

Kenma raced down an alternative route, sprinting even when his heart began beating against his chest in pain, and instead of having to look around for the boy, he ran right into him coming out of the alleyway and they both tumbled to the ground. When the boy looked up, his eyes widened, and immediately he was up and running in the other direction, but Kenma was fast, too. He ran after him, ducking into the same alley the boy had run into and diving to grab him. His fingers wrapped around the back of the boy’s shirt, pulling him to the ground just long enough for Kenma to climb on top of him and pin him down. 

“What do you want?” Kenma asked quickly, checking over his shoulder for any watching eyes before turning back to the boy who stared back at him with wide eyes.

“Hu- huh?”

“What do you want, kid? Tell me what you want to keep you quiet and I’ll give it to you.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” the kid denied with a panicked breath.

“You know who I am, of course you know what I’m talking about,” Kenma hissed at him. “Come on, I don’t have all day. Money? Got someone you want dead?”

“My sister!” the boy yelled, wide eyed. Kenma furrowed his brows.

“You want me to kill your sister?” 

“No!” the kid yelled with a quick shake of his head. “I- she was taken a few months ago.”

Kenma sighed, dropping his head. “Come on. Don’t you want money?” Kenma asked hopefully, but the kid just continued to stare at him. “Really? You want me to find your missing relative?”

“If you do I won’t say anything,” the kid bargained despite not really being in any position to do so considering Kenma could have just killed him right then and there. Instead Kenma just sighed as he pushed himself off of the boy and rolled flat onto the ground. He couldn’t have just found a Karasuno spy that wanted to be rich? Kenma could rob someone easily. Finding a missing relative, though? 

The boy sat up beside him and Kenma felt himself closing his eyes as he let the reality sink in that he had really just agreed to find a little kid’s missing relative in exchange for silence. What a bullshit deal. “Tell me what you know about her going missing and I’ll find her for you. But you better keep your damn mouth shut,” he groaned.

The boy nodded with wide eyes as Kenma pushed himself back up, sliding back until his back was pressed against the wall of the alley. “She went missing three months ago when a few Karasuno guys took her.” Probably kidnapped for sex trafficking, great. “They said they wouldn’t hurt her if I worked for them.”

“Are they giving you any proof she isn’t dead?” Kenma asked.

The kid’s head fell. “No…” So the girl was probably already in the system. 

“How old is she?”

“Eleven,” the boy answered. She would probably be in Karasuno’s training facility where they kept the new ones then, but there were two of those places in Kanagawa, nevermind outside of Kanagawa. 

“Where were you when it happened?”

“Kanagawa.”

“Obviously,” Kenma said with a roll of his eyes. “Where in Kanagawa?” 

“Yokohama.”

Well that narrowed it down. His sister would be at the place in Yokohama that kept all the children until they were ready to be thrown into the business. It was nasty how organized they were about child trafficking, but the worst part was that all of this was run outside of Karasuno now. To the kid, the older men probably appeared Karasuno, but if they were they weren’t there on official Karasuno business. They had stopped running child sex trafficking years ago. The facilities Kenma was currently aware of all ran under the radar with no direct Karasuno funding, and Kenma only knew about them because he checked up on the business every single week. He would have fucked with them years ago, but that would have just made the business happen under his radar, so instead he took the liberty of regularly stealing from them and reporting them anonymously so the authorities could do something about it, which they almost never did. In his defense he had been busy lately.

To get this kid’s sister back he would have to go into that place in Yokohama. It definitely would have just been easier to kill the boy and leave. 

Kenma pushed himself up with a sigh, handing the boy a little bit of money from his pocket. “I need a new hat and a new shirt. Get me those and we can go find your sister.”

“Wait- wait seriously? You can actually find her?!” the boy asked, completely ignoring what Kenma had just told him. 

“Yes,” Kenma affirmed with a nod. “I already know where she is. Go get me my things.”

“Oh- okay!” the boy agreed quickly, sprinting off with Kenma’s money. 

Once the boy was gone, Kenma sunk down to sit against the wall again, pulling out his laptop from his bag and settling it on his lap so he could begin hacking into the facility’s security. He had about ten minutes of peace and quiet which barely gave him enough time to break through security measures without setting off any alarms before the boy was racing back with a long sleeved green shirt and a new black hat. 

“Thanks. Sit down for now, I have to do something before we go,” Kenma mumbled, taking the clothes and the extra money from the boy and tucking them under his legs while the boy took a seat by his side. 

Another minute of silence was apparently all Kenma could have hoped for before the boy started talking again. “What are you doing in Kanagawa?”

“Work,” Kenma mumbled in response, hacking his way into the security cameras so he could look through the rooms. 

“What kind of work?” the boy asked.

“Adult work.”

“With Karasuno?”

Kenma rolled his eyes. “I’m bribing you to keep quiet, so what do you think?” he asked, pulling up the first set of cameras. “If you keep asking me questions I might think you’re trying to sell me out.”

“What does that mean?”

Kenma sighed. “It means you would tell Karasuno about me being here anyways.”

“Why would I do that?”

“Because you pledged your loyalties to Karasuno, didn’t you?” Kenma asked, but the look the kid gave him meant he also had no idea what that meant. “Nevermind.”

“What are loyalties?”

“It means who you work for and who you represent. I’m loyal to Fukurodani, you’re loyal to Karasuno.”

“Do you like Fukurodani?” the boy asked.

“Very much so, yes,” Kenma mumbled, flipping through the cameras to look for guard patterns and how many children were kept in each room.

“But I don’t like Karasuno.”

“Well you still work for them.”

“But I don’t want to. What if I was loyal to you instead?”

Kenma snorted, unable to prevent the smile that followed afterwards as he reached over to ruffle the boy’s head. “It doesn’t work like that. I don’t want your loyalties, I just want you to pretend you never saw me, okay?”

The boy nodded quickly. “Okay. What’s your name?”

“I thought you knew who I was?” Kenma asked, closing the cameras on his screen to check the alarm systems he would have to deal with.

“You’re Bokuto’s shadow,” the kid answered. Kenma let out a sigh at the title.

“Kenma,” he mumbled, closing his laptop and shoving it back in his bag before picking up the new clothes. “My name is Kenma.”

***

Kenma felt his knees weaken just looking at the building in front of him. The hairs on the back of his neck stood straight up as his skin felt cold and clammy. It would have been so much easier to just kill the boy and leave his sister here, but Kenma wasn’t so horrible that he would kill a twelve year old boy. 

He sighed, shaking out his shoulders to release the tension in them. “It’s fine,” he mumbled to himself, looking back up at the building. “You’re fine. It’s just a building.”

He started moving slowly, creeping forward until he had passed the main road surrounding the building, coming up to the backside of it. The area around it was empty for the most part since the people here didn’t want to do business like this in a place packed with people, but Kenma still moved forward carefully in case anybody outside would see him.

Making his way up to the closest window, he grabbed a big rock and slammed it against the glass. With his sweater, he cleared the glass away from the window and then pulled himself up with the sleeves wrapped around the palms of his hands. His feet landed on the ground of the empty room with a crunch of glass and Kenma quickly moved himself to press his back against the wall closest to the door. Footsteps approached quickly, probably following the sound of glass breaking, and the second the door opened Kenma launched forward with a knife to the man’s throat. He only waited a second to make sure nobody else but this man had come before slitting his throat and shoving the body away.

He timed himself as he moved throughout the hallways, keeping his back pressed to the wall with a knife ready in his hands. His gun was tucked in his waistband but that would create too much noise and personally Kenma was trying to get in and out of this place as quickly as possible.

The smell of the building sunk under Kenma’s skin, and though it was nothing but a bit of mold and lots of bleach, it made him gag. His mind raced with the overwhelming sense, tensing his entire body and causing his hands to shake. 

He pushed himself forward quickly, making his way two hallways down to where he knew the kids were being kept. The doors were lined with old stickers of names covering even older stickers which were still partially stuck to the doors. Kenma felt like he couldn’t even breath looking at all the doors.

He walked by them slowly, unable to peel his eyes away from them. Each name was written horribly in sharpie, smudged to all hell and torn in some places like none of these kids mattered. Kenma felt sick just looking at them, his head spinning.

Just as he spotted the room he was looking for down the hall his attention was brought to the door directly to his right. The stickers on the front had several names on them, but they were all new ones just covering old ones. He couldn’t stop himself as he lifted a shaky hand to the sticker in the middle of the door, prying his nails under it and peeling it off slowly, letting it fall to the ground. The one underneath that one was unfamiliar as well, so Kenma peeled that one away too. The one under that one was already partially ripped, so Kenma tore the remaining half of it away and dropped it to the ground like the other two. He reached up to peel the next one away, and the next one, and finally he tore the last one away to reveal a scraped up, smudged, old sticker peeling at the corners right in the center of the door. 

**Kenma**

Kenma sucked in a breath at the sight of his name on the door, and before he could stop himself he was tearing that sticker down as well, dropping it on the floor with all the rest. A shaky breath passed his lips as his fingers curled into a tight fist. His feet carried him back a few steps, eyes unable to leave the stickers, each holding a name of someone who had suffered here who was nothing more than a name to anyone else. 

He forced himself to turn around, to leave the door behind and not to open it to check who was on the other side. He didn’t care. It wasn’t him, it wasn’t his room, and he hadn’t been here for a long, long time now. He had a job to do. He wasn’t the same person he was when he had last been here. That Kenma was a scared little boy who knew nothing about how the world worked. But thinking about himself now, he really didn’t look any different shaking in the middle of a hallway that scared him so much more than dozens of killers had throughout his life. 

Before he knew it he was jogging down the hallway, ripping open the first door he saw with a sticker labelled “Kanoko” on the front. The second he stepped into the room he had five sets of eyes all focused on him at once, but there were only four girls in the room. The fat man in the middle of the room holding one of the girls down turned to look at him with a disgusting smirk. 

“And what do we have here?” the man asked. Kenma almost felt himself stumbling back. This wasn’t one of the men who had hurt him. He didn’t know him. This man was nothing to him. He took a few more steps towards Kenma, but he didn’t get the chance to reach out and touch him before Kenma had him down on the ground, knife slitting his throat open in one clean motion and leaving his body on the ground to rot. All the girls in the room whimpered and backed away from him as Kenma pushed himself up, the cuffs of his sleeves soaked in blood. 

“I’m sorry,” he whispered to the girls, wiping his knife on the dead man’s shirt before tucking it into his belt. “Is one of you Kanoko?”

“Who are you?” one of the girls asked, brown hair turned into a matted mess with her dress slipping off her shoulders. 

“It doesn’t matter who I am. Are you Kanoko? Your brother sent me to come get you,” Kenma mumbled, walking over to her and quickly pulling his knife out. She flinched, but Kenma tried to ignore it as he shakily cut off the ropes binding her hands to the posts of the bed, and then he moved over to the other girls and did the same, cutting them loose. “Come one, all four of you are leaving. Hurry, and be careful stepping around that guy. Don’t get your feet dirty, come on,” Kenma urged in the most calming voice he could, peeking his head around the doorframe to check for people before gesturing for the girls to follow him. They did so carefully, like a trail of ducks following their mother, but Kenma kept looking back every few seconds or so to make sure they all stayed with him. 

Kenma led them around two hallways before he heard the voices of other people. He gestured for the girls to stay where they were as he carefully looked around the corner. It was just two guys talking as they made their way down the hall. Kenma let them get close, gesturing for the girls to take a few steps back and to stay quiet. He waited until the men were just about to round the corner before jumping out. He hit the first guy with a knife to his throat, dropping him easily as he threw the knife at the second guy who had reached for his gun, a knife now stuck in his head as he fell backwards. Kenma took his knife back quickly before gesturing for the girls to come out. He didn’t have time to protect them from seeing dead bodies, nor did he think it wasn’t anything they hadn’t probably already seen. 

They followed him quickly to the window he had come in through. He kicked all the stray glass aside with his boot before gesturing for the girls to come over so he could lower them out the window. He got Kanoko out first, then the other three, and lastly he jumped out himself. 

“Okay, can you run?” Kenma asked, knowing walking was probably a struggle for them as it was from the lack of nutrition. “We need to get away from the building now. Try to keep up, okay? Let’s go.” Kenma took off at a slow pace, hoping the girls would be able to keep up with him even though their legs were tired. They stumbled a few times, and it was obviously a painful struggle to keep up with him, but Kenma couldn’t carry all four of them and he wasn’t leaving any of them behind now. 

Kenma led them around to the back of a warehouse a few blocks down, out of breath himself while the girls nearly collapsed from a lack of oxygen. Just as Kanoko stumbled over, the boy who Kenma still didn’t know the name of ran up with a cry and pulled her into his arms. He cried into her shoulder, holding her close as Kanoko stared with wide eyes, like she didn’t believe it was possible. 

“Thank you Kenma,” the boy cried, and Kenma gave him a soft smile, crouching down to meet his level. He pulled away from Kanoko carefully while Kenma handed him a wad of money. The boy stared at it for a moment before Kenma pushed it into his hands. 

“I’m leaving these girls in your care. You have to take care of them for now, okay?”

The boy nodded with tears in his eyes, on the verge of bursting out crying again. 

“They’re not safe just because they’re out of that building,” Kenma continued to mumble while all of the kids around him sat in shocked silence as he spoke. “You said you don’t like Karasuno, right? If you want to protect them, you’re going to need to go to Saitama. Do you know where that is?” 

The boy sniffled. “On- on the other side of Tokyo.”

“Exactly,” Kenma whispered, lifting his hand to wipe away the boy’s tears. “Saitama has more safe houses and orphanages than anywhere else. Don’t go to the police. They’ll split you up and question you for working with the yakuza. Look for any restaurant or bar with a spray painted red dot by the door. Those are owned by Aoba Johsai, okay? Aoba Johsai takes care of kids like you. Tell them you need a place to hide, and they should give you food and shelter. If they don’t, tell them you’re Akaashi’s personal guests. And if they ask you where your loyalties lie, you don’t answer, got it?”

“Why… why can’t we stay with you?” the boy asked, and Kenma gave him a sad smile. 

“Chiba doesn’t do well with runaway kids, we never have. Aoba Johsai has more connections. They’ll be safer for you,” Kenma assured him, pulling his hat off and placing it on the boy’s head instead. “Save the money for food and water. Don’t all sleep at the same time. Buy shoes and use busses as much as you can. Find the cheaper ones and take them as far as they’ll go. The further into Saitama you are, the better. Okay?”

“Thank you, Kenma,” Kanoko spoke up, blinking up at him with wet eyes.

Kenma smiled and patted her head gently. “Stay safe.”

“You’re leaving?” the boy asked, a tear slipping down his cheek.

“I told you, I have adult work to do,” Kenma mumbled before he was being tackled to the ground in a hug. The boy wrapped his arms around Kenma’s neck and cried, and Kenma hardly knew what to do except pat him on the back. “Stay safe, kid, okay?”

“I will,” the kid cried. “Thank you Kenma.”

The boy pulled back from Kenma with a tear stained face, and Kenma gave him a gentle smile as he pushed himself to his feet. He smiled at all of them before turning around and heading in the other direction, disappearing into the maze of buildings and rolling up the sleeves of his shirt to the middle of his arms to hide the blood since he didn’t have another shirt to wear instead, and most of the money he had had on him he had given to those kids. 

Even though it would be less of a hassle to travel through the center of Tokyo, he still left Kanagawa near the coast since it would be quicker. The sun was beginning to set around him and he still had a lot to tell Bokuto. Karasuno was starting a war with Aoba Johsai at the Kawa Miru as soon as The Black Sheep got back, and that was all incredibly important information. 

He barely got more than a mile out of Kanagawa before turning a corner and running into someone, profusely apologizing and bowing his head before looking up to see who exactly it was he had run into. Kenma looked at him with wide eyes, and Oikawa looked back at him with eyes just as wide, The Black Sheep by his side with lips parted in shock. 

“Ken-chan,” Oikawa greeted with a forced smile, and Kenma felt himself stumbling back a step. He didn’t have time for this right now. Why of all people did it have to be Oikawa? If it was anyone else he could have bullshitted his way out of this but… “Why are you coming out of Kanagawa?”

“Why are you heading towards Kanagawa?” Kenma countered quickly, taking another step back. “Sorry, I don’t care, actually. I’m busy.” That wasn’t a complete lie, he was busy and he really didn’t need to be wasting anymore time, especially with Oikawa. He would figure out why Oikawa and his new spy friend were going to Kanagawa later.

Kenma spun around to walk the other way but Oikawa’s grip on his wrist and a harsh tug prevented him from going very far. Oikawa pulled him close to him with a quirk of his eyebrows. “Actually, I’ve decided that’s not going to work this time,” Oikawa decided.

“Let go of me. What are you going to do? Kill me? You want a war with Fukurodani? Akaashi would-”

“What? Akaashi would what?” Oikawa challenged with a tilt of his head. “Because as far as I’m aware, right now it looks like Fukurodani is making a deal with Karasuno or something.”

“Then by that logic every time Bokuto and Akaashi meet they must be striking a deal, but you know that’s not how that works,” Kenma hurriedly pushed out, pulling on his wrist to no avail. “Let go of me, Oikawa.” 

“What’s wrong with you today, Ken-chan? You’re so jumpy!”

“Oikawa, let go of my fucking arm,” Kenma hissed.

“How about you come back with me and Shiro to Saitama and have a chat with us and Akaashi before you go back?” Oikawa bargained.

“And why the hell would I do that?” Kenma asked with a harsh glare. 

“Because I can tell you know something, and I can tell it’s important, and I want to know what it is.”

“It’s none of your fucking business that’s what it is,” Kenma gritted out, reaching for his belt with his left hand to get his knife, but before he got the chance Oikawa had pulled out his gun with his free hand and banged it against Kenma’s head, knocking him out cold. 


End file.
